For Stan Rice, Carole Malkin,
and Alice O’Brien Borchardt
PART I
I SEE…” said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked
across the room towards the window. For a long time he stood
there against the dim light from Divisadero Street and the passing
beams of trac. The boy could see the furnishings of the room
more clearly now, the round oak table, the chairs. A wash basin
hung on one wall with a mirror. He set his briefcase on the table
and waited.
“But how much tape do you have with you?” asked the
vampire, turning now so the boy could see his prole. “Enough
for the story of a life?”
“Sure, if it’s a good life. Sometimes I interview as many as three
or four people a night if I’m lucky. But it has to be a good story.
That’s only fair, isn’t it?”
“Admirably fair,” the vampire answered. “I would like to tell
you the story of my life, then. I would like to do that very much.”
“Great,” said the boy. And quickly he removed the small tape
recorder from his briefcase, making a check of the cassette and
the batteries. “I’m really anxious to hear why you believe this,
why you…”
“No,” said the vampire abruptly. “We can’t begin that way. Is
your equipment ready?”
“Yes,” said the boy.
“Then sit down. I’m going to turn on the overhead light.”
“But I thought vampires didn’t like light,” said the boy. “If you
think the dark adds to the atmosphere…” But then he stopped.
The vampire was watching him with his back to the window. The
boy could make out nothing of his face now, and something about
the still gure there distracted him. He started to say something
again but he said nothing. And then he sighed with relief when
the vampire moved towards the table and reached for the
overhead cord.
At once the room was ooded with a harsh yellow light. And
the boy, staring up at the vampire, could not repress a gasp. His
ngers danced backwards on the table to grasp the edge. “Dear
God!” he whispered, and then he gazed, speechless, at the
vampire.
The vampire was utterly white and smooth, as if he were
sculpted from bleached bone, and his face was as seemingly
inanimate as a statue, except for two brilliant green eyes that
looked down at the boy intently like ames in a skull. But then
the vampire smiled almost wistfully, and the smooth white
substance of his face moved with the innitely exible but
minimal lines of a cartoon. “Do you see?” he asked softly.
The boy shuddered, lifting his hand as if to shield himself from
a powerful light. His eyes moved slowly over the nely tailored
black coat he’d only glimpsed in the bar, the long folds of the
cape, the black silk tie knotted at the throat, and the gleam of the
white collar that was as white as the vampire’s esh. He stared at
the vampire’s full black hair, the waves that were combed back
over the tips of the ears, the curls that barely touched the edge of
the white collar.
“Now, do you still want the interview?” the vampire asked.
The boy’s mouth was open before the sound came out. He was
nodding. Then he said, “Yes.”
The vampire sat down slowly opposite him and, leaning
forward, said gently, condentially, “Don’t be afraid. Just start
the tape.”
And then he reached out over the length of the table. The boy
recoiled, sweat running down the sides of his face. The vampire
clamped a hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “Believe me, I
won’t hurt you. I want this opportunity. It’s more important to me
than you can realize now. I want you to begin.” And he withdrew
his hand and sat collected, waiting.
It took a moment for the boy to wipe his forehead and his lips
with a handkerchief, to stammer that the microphone was in the
machine, to press the button, to say that the machine was on.
“You weren’t always a vampire, were you?” he began.
“No,” answered the vampire. “I was a twenty-ve-year-old man
when I became a vampire, and the year was seventeen ninety-
one.”
The boy was startled by the preciseness of the date and he
repeated it before he asked, “How did it come about?”
“There’s a simple answer to that. I don’t believe I want to give
simple answers,” said the vampire. “I think I want to tell the real
story.…”
“Yes,” the boy said quickly. He was folding his handkerchief
over and over and wiping his lips now with it again.
“There was a tragedy…” the vampire started. “It was my
younger brother….He died.” And then he stopped, so that the boy
cleared his throat and wiped at his face again before stung the
handkerchief almost impatiently into his pocket.
“It’s not painful, is it?” he asked timidly.
“Does it seem so?” asked the vampire. “No.” He shook his head.
“It’s simply that I’ve only told this story to one other person. And
that was so long ago. No, it’s not painful….
“We were living in Louisiana then. We’d received a land grant
and settled two indigo plantations on the Mississippi very near
New Orleans.…”
“Ah, that’s the accent…” the boy said softly.
For a moment the vampire stared blankly. “I have an accent?”
He began to laugh.
And the boy, ustered, answered quickly. “I noticed it in the
bar when I asked you what you did for a living. It’s just a slight
sharpness to the consonants, that’s all. I never guessed it was
French.”
“It’s all right,” the vampire assured him. “I’m not as shocked as
I pretend to be. It’s only that I forget it from time to time. But let
me go on.…”
“Please…” said the boy.
“I was talking about the plantations. They had a great deal to
do with it, really, my becoming a vampire. But I’ll come to that.
Our life there was both luxurious and primitive. And we ourselves
found it extremely attractive. You see, we lived far better there
than we could have ever lived in France. Perhaps the sheer
wilderness of Louisiana only made it seem so, but seeming so, it
was. I remember the imported furniture that cluttered the house.”
The vampire smiled. “And the harpsichord; that was lovely. My
sister used to play it. On summer evenings, she would sit at the
keys with her back to the open French windows. And I can still
remember that thin, rapid music and the vision of the swamp
rising beyond her, the moss-hung cypresses oating against the
sky. And there were the sounds of the swamp, a chorus of
creatures, the cry of the birds. I think we loved it. It made the
rosewood furniture all the more precious, the music more delicate
and desirable. Even when the wisteria tore the shutters o the
attic windows and worked its tendrils right into the whitewashed
brick in less than a year.…Yes, we loved it. All except my brother.
I don’t think I ever heard him complain of anything, but I knew
how he felt. My father was dead then, and I was head of the
family and I had to defend him constantly from my mother and
sister. They wanted to take him visiting, and to New Orleans for
parties, but he hated these things. I think he stopped going
altogether before he was twelve. Prayer was what mattered to
him, prayer and his leatherbound lives of the saints.
“Finally I built him an oratory removed from the house, and he
began to spend most of every day there and often the early
evening. It was ironic, really. He was so dierent from us, so
dierent from everyone, and I was so regular! There was nothing
extraordinary about me whatsoever.” The vampire smiled.
“Sometimes in the evening I would go out to him and nd him
in the garden near the oratory, sitting absolutely composed on a
stone bench there, and I’d tell him my troubles, the diculties I
had with the slaves, how I distrusted the overseer or the weather
or my brokers…all the problems that made up the length and
breadth of my existence. And he would listen, making only a few
comments, always sympathetic, so that when I left him I had the
distinct impression he had solved everything for me. I didn’t think
I could deny him anything, and I vowed that no matter how it
would break my heart to lose him, he could enter the priesthood
when the time came. Of course, I was wrong.” The vampire
stopped.
For a moment the boy only gazed at him and then he started as
if awakened from deep thought, and he oundered, as if he could
not nd the right words. “Ah…he didn’t want to be a priest?” the
boy asked. The vampire studied him as if trying to discern the
meaning of his expression. Then he said:
“I meant that I was wrong about myself, about my not denying
him anything.” His eyes moved over the far wall and xed on the
panes of the window. “He began to see visions.”
“Real visions?” the boy asked, but again there was hesitation, as
if he were thinking of something else.
“I didn’t think so,” the vampire answered. “It happened when
he was fteen. He was very handsome then. He had the smoothest
skin and the largest blue eyes. He was robust, not thin as I am
now and was then…but his eyes…it was as if when I looked into
his eyes I was standing alone on the edge of the world…on a
windswept ocean beach. There was nothing but the soft roar of
the waves. Well,” he said, his eyes still xed on the window
panes, “he began to see visions. He only hinted at this at rst, and
he stopped taking his meals altogether. He lived in the oratory. At
any hour of day or night, I could nd him on the bare agstones
kneeling before the altar. And the oratory itself was neglected. He
stopped tending the candles or changing the altar cloths or even
sweeping out the leaves. One night I became really alarmed when
I stood in the rose arbor watching him for one solid hour, during
which he never moved from his knees and never once lowered his
arms, which he held outstretched in the form of a cross. The
slaves all thought he was mad.” The vampire raised his eyebrows
in wonder. “I was convinced that he was only…overzealous. That
in his love for God, he had perhaps gone too far. Then he told me
about the visions. Both St. Dominic and the Blessed Virgin Mary
had come to him in the oratory. They had told him he was to sell
all our property in Louisiana, everything we owned, and use the
money to do God’s work in France. My brother was to be a great
religious leader, to return the country to its former fervor, to turn
the tide against atheism and the Revolution. Of course, he had no
money of his own. I was to sell the plantations and our town
houses in New Orleans and give the money to him.”
Again the vampire stopped. And the boy sat motionless
regarding him, astonished. “Ah…excuse me,” he whispered.
“What did you say? Did you sell the plantations?”
“No,” said the vampire, his face calm as it had been from the
start. “I laughed at him. And he…he became incensed. He insisted
his command came from the Virgin herself. Who was I to
disregard it? Who indeed?” he asked softly, as if he were thinking
of this again. “Who indeed? And the more he tried to convince
me, the more I laughed. It was nonsense, I told him, the product
of an immature and even morbid mind. The oratory was a
mistake, I said to him; I would have it torn down at once. He
would go to school in New Orleans and get such inane notions out
of his head. I don’t remember all that I said. But I remember the
feeling. Behind all this contemptuous dismissal on my part was a
smoldering anger and a disappointment. I was bitterly
disappointed. I didn’t believe him at all.”
“But that’s understandable,” said the boy quickly when the
vampire paused, his expression of astonishment softening. “I
mean, would anyone have believed him?”
“Is it so understandable?” The vampire looked at the boy. “I
think perhaps it was vicious egotism. Let me explain. I loved my
brother, as I told you, and at times I believed him to be a living
saint. I encouraged him in his prayer and meditations, as I said,
and I was willing to give him up to the priesthood. And if
someone had told me of a saint in Arles or Lourdes who saw
visions, I would have believed it. I was a Catholic; I believed in
saints. I lit tapers before their marble statues in churches; I knew
their pictures, their symbols, their names. But I didn’t, couldn’t
believe my brother. Not only did I not believe he saw visions, I
couldn’t entertain the notion for a moment. Now, why? Because
he was my brother. Holy he might be, peculiar most denitely;
but Francis of Assisi, no. Not my brother. No brother of mine
could be such. That is egotism. Do you see?”
The boy thought about it before he answered and then he
nodded and said that yes, he thought that he did.
“Perhaps he saw the visions,” said the vampire.
“Then you…you don’t claim to know…now…whether he did or
not?”
“No, but I do know that he never wavered in his conviction for
a second. That I know now and knew then the night he left my
room crazed and grieved. He never wavered for an instant. And
within minutes, he was dead.”
“How?” the boy asked.
“He simply walked out of the French doors onto the gallery and
stood for a moment at the head of the brick stairs. And then he
fell. He was dead when I reached the bottom, his neck broken.”
The vampire shook his head in consternation, but his face was
still serene.
“Did you see him fall?” asked the boy. “Did he lose his
footing?”
“No, but two of the servants saw it happen. They said that he
had looked up as if he had just seen something in the air. Then his
entire body moved forward as if being swept by a wind. One of
them said he was about to say something when he fell. I thought
that he was about to say something too, but it was at that moment
I turned away from the window. My back was turned when I
heard the noise.” He glanced at the tape recorder. “I could not
forgive myself. I felt responsible for his death,” he said. “And
everyone else seemed to think I was responsible also.”
“But how could they? You said they saw him fall.”
“It wasn’t a direct accusation. They simply knew that something
had passed between us that was unpleasant. That we had argued
minutes before the fall. The servants had heard us, my mother
had heard us. My mother would not stop asking me what had
happened and why my brother, who was so quiet, had been
shouting. Then my sister joined in, and of course I refused to say.
I was so bitterly shocked and miserable that I had no patience
with anyone, only the vague determination they would not know
about his ‘visions.’ They would not know that he had become,
nally, not a saint, but only a…fanatic. My sister went to bed
rather than face the funeral, and my mother told everyone in the
parish that something horrible had happened in my room which I
would not reveal; and even the police questioned me, on the word
of my own mother. Finally the priest came to see me and
demanded to know what had gone on. I told no one. It was only a
discussion, I said. I was not on the gallery when he fell, I
protested, and they all stared at me as if I’d killed him. And I felt
that I’d killed him. I sat in the parlor beside his con for two
days thinking, I have killed him. I stared at his face until spots
appeared before my eyes and I nearly fainted. The back of his
skull had been shattered on the pavement, and his head had the
wrong shape on the pillow. I forced myself to stare at it, to study
it simply because I could hardly endure the pain and the smell of
decay, and I was tempted over and over to try to open his eyes.
All these were mad thoughts, mad impulses. The main thought
was this: I had laughed at him; I had not believed him; I had not
been kind to him. He had fallen because of me.”
“This really happened, didn’t it?” the boy whispered. “You’re
telling me something…that’s true.”
“Yes,” said the vampire, looking at him without surprise. “I
want to go on telling you.” But as his eyes passed over the boy
and returned to the window, he showed only faint interest in the
boy, who seemed engaged in some silent inner struggle.
“But you said you didn’t know about the visions, that you, a
vampire…didn’t know for certain whether…”
“I want to take things in order,” said the vampire, “I want to go
on telling you things as they happened. No, I don’t know about
the visions. To this day.” And again he waited until the boy said:
“Yes, please, please go on.”
“Well, I wanted to sell the plantations. I never wanted to see
the house or the oratory again. I leased them nally to an agency
which would work them for me and manage things so I need
never go there, and I moved my mother and sister to one of the
town houses in New Orleans. Of course, I did not escape my
brother for a moment. I could think of nothing but his body
rotting in the ground. He was buried in the St. Louis cemetery in
New Orleans, and I did everything to avoid passing those gates;
but still I thought of him constantly. Drunk or sober, I saw his
body rotting in the con, and I couldn’t bear it. Over and over I
dreamed that he was at the head of the steps and I was holding
his arm, talking kindly to him, urging him back into the bedroom,
telling him gently that I did believe him, that he must pray for me
to have faith. Meantime, the slaves on Pointe du Lac (that was my
plantation) had begun to talk of seeing his ghost on the gallery,
and the overseer couldn’t keep order. People in society asked my
sister oensive questions about the whole incident, and she
became an hysteric. She wasn’t really an hysteric. She simply
thought she ought to react that way, so she did. I drank all the
time and was at home as little as possible. I lived like a man who
wanted to die but who had no courage to do it himself. I walked
black streets and alleys alone; I passed out in cabarets. I backed
out of two duels more from apathy than cowardice and truly
wished to be murdered. And then I was attacked. It might have
been anyone—and my invitation was open to sailors, thieves,
maniacs, anyone. But it was a vampire. He caught me just a few
steps from my door one night and left me for dead, or so I
thought.”
“You mean…he sucked your blood?” the boy asked.
“Yes,” the vampire laughed. “He sucked my blood. That is the
way it’s done.”
“But you lived,” said the young man. “You said he left you for
dead.”
“Well, he drained me almost to the point of death, which was
for him sucient. I was put to bed as soon as I was found,
confused and really unaware of what had happened to me. I
suppose I thought that drink had nally caused a stroke. I
expected to die now and had no interest in eating or drinking or
talking to the doctor. My mother sent for the priest. I was feverish
by then and I told the priest everything, all about my brother’s
visions and what I had done. I remember I clung to his arm,
making him swear over and over he would tell no one. ‘I know I
didn’t kill him,’ I said to the priest nally. ‘It’s that I cannot live
now that he’s dead. Not after the way I treated him.’
“ ‘That’s ridiculous,’ he answered me. ‘Of course you can live.
There’s nothing wrong with you but self-indulgence. Your mother
needs you, not to mention your sister. And as for this brother of
yours, he was possessed of the devil.’ I was so stunned when he
said this I couldn’t protest. The devil made the visions, he went on
to explain. The devil was rampant. The entire country of France
was under the inuence of the devil, and the Revolution had been
his greatest triumph. Nothing would have saved my brother but
exorcism, prayer, and fasting, men to hold him down while the
devil raged in his body and tried to throw him about. ‘The devil
threw him down the steps; it’s perfectly obvious,’ he declared.
‘You weren’t talking to your brother in that room, you were
talking to the devil.’ Well, this enraged me. I believed before that
I had been pushed to my limits, but I had not. He went on talking
about the devil, about voodoo amongst the slaves and cases of
possession in other parts of the world. And I went wild. I wrecked
the room in the process of nearly killing him.”
“But your strength…the vampire…?” asked the boy.
“I was out of my mind,” the vampire explained. “I did things I
could not have done in perfect health. The scene is confused, pale,
fantastical now. But I do remember that I drove him out of the
back doors of the house, across the courtyard, and against the
brick wall of the kitchen, where I pounded his head until I nearly
killed him. When I was subdued nally, and exhausted then
almost to the point of death, they bled me. The fools. But I was
going to say something else. It was then that I conceived of my
own egotism. Perhaps I’d seen it reected in the priest. His
contemptuous attitude towards my brother reected my own; his
immediate and shallow carping about the devil; his refusal to
even entertain the idea that sanctity had passed so close.”
“But he did believe in possession by the devil.”
“That is a much more mundane idea,” said the vampire
immediately. “People who cease to believe in God or goodness
altogether still believe in the devil. I don’t know why. No, I do
indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is
eternally dicult. But you must understand, possession is really
another way of saying someone is mad. I felt it was, for the priest.
I’m sure he’d seen madness. Perhaps he had stood right over
raving madness and pronounced it possession. You don’t have to
see Satan when he is exorcised. But to stand in the presence of a
saint…To believe that the saint has seen a vision. No, it’s egotism,
our refusal to believe it could occur in our midst.”
“I never thought of it in that way,” said the boy. “But what
happened to you? You said they bled you to cure you, and that
must have nearly killed you.”
The vampire laughed. “Yes. It certainly did. But the vampire
came back that night. You see, he wanted Pointe du Lac, my
plantation.
“It was very late, after my sister had fallen asleep. I can
remember it as if it were yesterday. He came in from the
courtyard, opening the French doors without a sound, a tall fair-
skinned man with a mass of blond hair and a graceful, almost
feline quality to his movements. And gently, he draped a shawl
over my sister’s eyes and lowered the wick of the lamp. She dozed
there beside the basin and the cloth with which she’d bathed my
forehead, and she never once stirred under that shawl until
morning. But by that time I was greatly changed.”
“What was this change?” asked the boy.
The vampire sighed. He leaned back against the chair and
looked at the walls. “At rst I thought he was another doctor, or
someone summoned by the family to try to reason with me. But
this suspicion was removed at once. He stepped close to my bed
and leaned down so that his face was in the lamplight, and I saw
that he was no ordinary man at all. His gray eyes burned with an
incandescence, and the long white hands which hung by his sides
were not those of a human being. I think I knew everything in
that instant, and all that he told me was only aftermath. What I
mean is, the moment I saw him, saw his extraordinary aura and
knew him to be no creature I’d ever known, I was reduced to
nothing. That ego which could not accept the presence of an
extraordinary human being in its midst was crushed. All my
conceptions, even my guilt and wish to die, seemed utterly
unimportant. I completely forgot myself!” he said, now silently
touching his breast with his st. “I forgot myself totally. And in
the same instant knew totally the meaning of possibility. From
then on I experienced only increasing wonder. As he talked to me
and told me of what I might become, of what his life had been
and stood to be, my past shrank to embers. I saw my life as if I
stood apart from it, the vanity, the self-serving, the constant
eeing from one petty annoyance after another, the lip service to
God and the Virgin and a host of saints whose names lled my
prayer books, none of whom made the slightest dierence in a
narrow, materialistic, and selsh existence. I saw my real gods…
the gods of most men. Food, drink, and security in conformity.
Cinders.”
The boy’s face was tense with a mixture of confusion and
amazement. “And so you decided to become a vampire?” he
asked. The vampire was silent for a moment.
“Decided. It doesn’t seem the right word. Yet I cannot say it was
inevitable from the moment that he stepped into that room. No,
indeed, it was not inevitable. Yet I can’t say I decided. Let me say
that when he’d nished speaking, no other decision was possible
for me, and I pursued my course without a backward glance.
Except for one.”
“Except for one? What?”
“My last sunrise,” said the vampire. “That morning, I was not
yet a vampire. And I saw my last sunrise.
“I remember it completely; yet I do not think I remember any
other sunrise before it. I remember the light came rst to the tops
of the French windows, a paling behind the lace curtains, and
then a gleam growing brighter and brighter in patches among the
leaves of the trees. Finally the sun came through the windows
themselves and the lace lay in shadows on the stone oor, and all
over the form of my sister, who was still sleeping, shadows of lace
on the shawl over her shoulders and head. As soon as she was
warm, she pushed the shawl away without awakening, and then
the sun shone full on her eyes and she tightened her eyelids. Then
it was gleaming on the table where she rested her head on her
arms, and gleaming, blazing, in the water in the pitcher. And I
could feel it on my hands on the counterpane and then on my
face. I lay in the bed thinking about all the things the vampire
had told me, and then it was that I said good-bye to the sunrise
and went out to become a vampire. It was…the last sunrise.”
The vampire was looking out the window again. And when he
stopped, the silence was so sudden the boy seemed to hear it.
Then he could hear the noises from the street. The sound of a
truck was deafening. The light cord stirred with the vibration.
Then the truck was gone.
“Do you miss it?” he asked then in a small voice.
“Not really,” said the vampire. “There are so many other things.
But where were we? You want to know how it happened, how I
became a vampire.”
“Yes,” said the boy. “How did you change, exactly?”
“I can’t tell you exactly,” said the vampire. “I can tell you about
it, enclose it with words that will make the value of it to me
evident to you. But I can’t tell you exactly, any more than I could
tell you exactly what is the experience of sex if you have never
had it.”
The young man seemed struck suddenly with still another
question, but before he could speak the vampire went on. “As I
told you, this vampire Lestat wanted the plantation. A mundane
reason, surely, for granting me a life which will last until the end
of the world; but he was not a very discriminating person. He
didn’t consider the world’s small population of vampires as being
a select club, I should say. He had human problems, a blind father
who did not know his son was a vampire and must not nd out.
Living in New Orleans had become too dicult for him,
considering his needs and the necessity to care for his father, and
he wanted Pointe du Lac.
“We went at once to the plantation the next evening, ensconced
the blind father in the master bedroom, and I proceeded to make
the change. I cannot say that it consisted in any one step really—
though one, of course, was the step beyond which I could make
no return. But there were several acts involved, and the rst was
the death of the overseer. Lestat took him in his sleep. I was to
watch and to approve; that is, to witness the taking of a human
life as proof of my commitment and part of my change. This
proved without doubt the most dicult part for me. I’ve told you
I had no fear regarding my own death, only a squeamishness
about taking my life myself. But I had a most high regard for the
life of others, and a horror of death most recently developed
because of my brother. I had to watch the overseer awake with a
start, try to throw o Lestat with both hands, fail, then lie there
struggling under Lestat’s grasp, and nally go limp, drained of
blood. And die. He did not die at once. We stood in his narrow
bedroom for the better part of an hour watching him die. Part of
my change, as I said. Lestat would never have stayed otherwise.
Then it was necessary to get rid of the overseer’s body. I was
almost sick from this. Weak and feverish already, I had little
reserve; and handling the dead body with such a purpose caused
me nausea. Lestat was laughing, telling me callously that I would
feel so dierent once I was a vampire that I would laugh, too. He
was wrong about that. I never laugh at death, no matter how
often and regularly I am the cause of it.
“But let me take things in order. We had to drive up the river
road until we came to open elds and leave the overseer there.
We tore his coat, stole his money, and saw to it his lips were
stained with liquor. I knew his wife, who lived in New Orleans,
and knew the state of desperation she would suer when the body
was discovered. But more than sorrow for her, I felt pain that she
would never know what had happened, that her husband had not
been found drunk on the road by robbers. As we beat the body,
bruising the face and the shoulders, I became more and more
aroused. Of course, you must realize that all this time the vampire
Lestat was extraordinary. He was no more human to me than a
biblical angel. But under this pressure, my enchantment with him
was strained. I had seen my becoming a vampire in two lights:
The rst light was simply enchantment; Lestat had overwhelmed
me on my deathbed. But the other light was my wish for self-
destruction. My desire to be thoroughly damned. This was the
open door through which Lestat had come on both the rst and
second occasion. Now I was not destroying myself but someone
else. The overseer, his wife, his family. I recoiled and might have
ed from Lestat, my sanity thoroughly shattered, had not he
sensed with an infallible instinct what was happening. Infallible
instinct…” The vampire mused. “Let me say the powerful instinct
of a vampire to whom even the slightest change in a human’s
facial expression is as apparent as a gesture. Lestat had
preternatural timing. He rushed me into the carriage and whipped
the horses home. ‘I want to die,’ I began to murmur. ‘This is
unbearable. I want to die. You have it in your power to kill me.
Let me die.’ I refused to look at him, to be spellbound by the sheer
beauty of his appearance. He spoke my name to me softly,
laughing. As I said, he was determined to have the plantation.”
“But would he have let you go?” asked the boy. “Under any
circumstances?”
“I don’t know. Knowing Lestat as I do now, I would say he
would have killed me rather than let me go. But this was what I
wanted, you see. It didn’t matter. No, this was what I thought I
wanted. As soon as we reached the house, I jumped down out of
the carriage and walked, a zombie, to the brick stairs where my
brother had fallen. The house had been unoccupied for months
now, the overseer having his own cottage, and the Louisiana heat
and damp were already picking apart the steps. Every crevice was
sprouting grass and even small wildowers. I remember feeling
the moisture which in the night was cool as I sat down on the
lower steps and even rested my head against the brick and felt the
little wax-stemmed wildowers with my hands. I pulled a clump
of them out of the easy dirt in one hand. ‘I want to die; kill me.
Kill me,’ I said to the vampire. ‘Now I am guilty of murder. I can’t
live.’ He sneered with the impatience of people listening to the
obvious lies of others. And then in a ash he fastened on me just
as he had on my man. I thrashed against him wildly. I dug my
boot into his chest and kicked him as ercely as I could, his teeth
stinging my throat, the fever pounding in my temples. And with a
movement of his entire body, much too fast for me to see, he was
suddenly standing disdainfully at the foot of the steps. ‘I thought
you wanted to die, Louis,’ he said.”
The boy made a soft, abrupt sound when the vampire said his
name, which the vampire acknowledged with the quick
statement, “Yes, that is my name,” and went on.
“Well, I lay there helpless in the face of my own cowardice and
fatuousness again,” he said. “Perhaps so directly confronted with
it, I might in time have gained the courage to truly take my life,
not to whine and beg for others to take it. I saw myself turning on
a knife then, languishing in a day-to-day suering which I found
as necessary as penance from the confessional, truly hoping death
would nd me unawares and render me t for eternal pardon.
And also I saw myself as if in a vision standing at the head of the
stairs, just where my brother had stood, and then hurtling my
body down on the bricks.
“But there was no time for courage. Or shall I say, there was no
time in Lestat’s plan for anything but his plan. ‘Now listen to me,
Louis,’ he said, and he lay down beside me now on the steps, his
movement so graceful and so personal that at once it made me
think of a lover. I recoiled. But he put his right arm around me
and pulled me close to his chest. Never had I been this close to
him before, and in the dim light I could see the magnicent
radiance of his eye and the unnatural mask of his skin. As I tried
to move, he pressed his right ngers against my lips and said, ‘Be
still. I am going to drain you now to the very threshold of death,
and I want you to be quiet, so quiet that you can almost hear the
ow of blood through your veins, so quiet that you can hear the
ow of that same blood through mine. It is your consciousness,
your will, which must keep you alive.’ I wanted to struggle, but
he pressed so hard with his ngers that he held my entire prone
body in check; and as soon as I stopped my abortive attempt at
rebellion, he sank his teeth into my neck.”
The boy’s eyes grew huge. He had drawn farther and farther
back in his chair as the vampire spoke, and now his face was
tense, his eyes narrow, as if he were preparing to weather a blow.
“Have you ever lost a great amount of blood?” asked the
vampire. “Do you know the feeling?”
The boy’s lips shaped the word no, but no sound came out. He
cleared his throat. “No,” he said.
“Candles burned in the upstairs parlor, where we had planned
the death of the overseer. An oil lantern swayed in the breeze on
the gallery. All of this light coalesced and began to shimmer, as
though a golden presence hovered above me, suspended in the
stairwell, softly entangled with the railings, curling and
contracting like smoke. ‘Listen, keep your eyes wide,’ Lestat
whispered to me, his lips moving against my neck. I remember
that the movement of his lips raised the hair all over my body,
sent a shock of sensation through my body that was not unlike the
pleasure of passion….”
He mused, his right ngers slightly curled beneath his chin, the
rst nger appearing to lightly stroke it. “The result was that
within minutes I was weak to paralysis. Panic-stricken, I
discovered I could not even will myself to speak. Lestat still held
me, of course, and his arm was like the weight of an iron bar. I
felt his teeth withdraw with such a keenness that the two
puncture wounds seemed enormous, lined with pain. And now he
bent over my helpless head and, taking his right hand o me, bit
his own wrist. The blood owed down upon my shirt and coat,
and he watched it with a narrow, gleaming eye. It seemed an
eternity that he watched it, and that shimmer of light now hung
behind his head like the backdrop of an apparition. I think that I
knew what he meant to do even before he did it, and I was
waiting in my helplessness as if I’d been waiting for years. He
pressed his bleeding wrist to my mouth, said rmly, a little
impatiently, ‘Louis, drink.’ And I did. ‘Steady, Louis,’ and ‘Hurry,’
he whispered to me a number of times. I drank, sucking the blood
out of the holes, experiencing for the rst time since infancy the
special pleasure of sucking nourishment, the body focused with
the mind upon one vital source. Then something happened.” The
vampire sat back, a slight frown on his face.
“How pathetic it is to describe these things which can’t truly be
described,” he said, his voice low almost to a whisper. The boy sat
as if frozen.
“I saw nothing but that light then as I drew blood. And then
this next thing, this next thing was…sound. A dull roar at rst
and then a pounding like the pounding of a drum, growing louder
and louder, as if some enormous creature were coming up on one
slowly through a dark and alien forest, pounding as he came, a
huge drum. And then there came the pounding of another drum,
as if another giant were coming yards behind him, and each giant,
intent on his own drum, gave no notice to the rhythm of the
other. The sound grew louder and louder until it seemed to ll
not just my hearing but all my senses, to be throbbing in my lips
and ngers, in the esh of my temples, in my veins. Above all, in
my veins, drum and then the other drum; and then Lestat pulled
his wrist free suddenly, and I opened my eyes and checked myself
in a moment of reaching for his wrist, grabbing it, forcing it back
to my mouth at all costs; I checked myself because I realized that
the drum was my heart, and the second drum had been his.” The
vampire sighed. “Do you understand?”
The boy began to speak, and then he shook his head. “No…I
mean, I do,” he said. “I mean, I…”
“Of course,” said the vampire, looking away.
“Wait, wait!” said the boy in a welter of excitement. “The tape
is almost gone. I have to turn it over.” The vampire watched
patiently as he changed it.
“What happened then?” the boy asked. His face was moist, and
he wiped it hurriedly with his handkerchief.
“I saw as a vampire,” said the vampire, his voice now slightly
detached. It seemed almost distracted. Then he drew himself up.
“Lestat was standing again at the foot of the stairs, and I saw him
as I could not possibly have seen him before. He had seemed
white to me before, starkly white, so that in the night he was
almost luminous; and now I saw him lled with his own life and
own blood: he was radiant, not luminous. And then I saw that not
only Lestat had changed, but all things had changed.
“It was as if I had only just been able to see colors and shapes
for the rst time. I was so enthralled with the buttons on Lestat’s
black coat that I looked at nothing else for a long time. Then
Lestat began to laugh, and I heard his laughter as I had never
heard anything before. His heart I still heard like the beating of a
drum, and now came this metallic laughter. It was confusing, each
sound running into the next sound, like the mingling
reverberations of bells, until I learned to separate the sounds, and
then they overlapped, each soft but distinct, increasing but
discrete, peals of laughter.” The vampire smiled with delight.
“Peals of bells.
“ ‘Stop looking at my buttons,’ Lestat said. ‘Go out there into
the trees. Rid yourself of all the human waste in your body, and
don’t fall so madly in love with the night that you lose your way!’
“That, of course, was a wise command. When I saw the moon
on the agstones, I became so enamored with it that I must have
spent an hour there. I passed my brother’s oratory without so
much as a thought of him, and standing among the cottonwood
and oaks, I heard the night as if it were a chorus of whispering
women, all beckoning me to their breasts. As for my body, it was
not yet totally converted, and as soon as I became the least
accustomed to the sounds and sights, it began to ache. All my
human uids were being forced out of me. I was dying as a
human, yet completely alive as a vampire; and with my awakened
senses, I had to preside over the death of my body with a certain
discomfort and then, nally, fear. I ran back up the steps to the
parlor, where Lestat was already at work on the plantation
papers, going over the expenses and prots for the last year.
‘You’re a rich man,’ he said to me when I came in. ‘Something’s
happening to me,’ I shouted.
“ ‘You’re dying, that’s all; don’t be a fool. Don’t you have any
oil lamps? All this money and you can’t aord whale oil except
for that lantern. Bring me that lantern.’
“ ‘Dying!’ I shouted. ‘Dying!’
“ ‘It happens to everyone,’ he persisted, refusing to help me. As
I look back on this, I still despise him for it. Not because I was
afraid, but because he might have drawn my attention to these
changes with reverence. He might have calmed me and told me I
might watch my death with the same fascination with which I had
watched and felt the night. But he didn’t. Lestat was never the
vampire I am. Not at all.” The vampire did not say this boastfully.
He said it as if he would truly have had it otherwise.
“Alors,” he sighed. “I was dying fast, which meant that my
capacity for fear was diminishing as rapidly. I simply regret I was
not more attentive to the process. Lestat was being a perfect idiot.
‘Oh, for the love of hell!’ he began shouting. ‘Do you realize I’ve
made no provision for you? What a fool I am.’ I was tempted to
say, ‘Yes, you are,’ but I didn’t. ‘You’ll have to bed down with me
this morning. I haven’t prepared you a con.’ ”
The vampire laughed. “The con struck such a chord of terror
in me I think it absorbed all the capacity for terror I had left.
Then came only my mild alarm at having to share a con with
Lestat. He was in his father’s bedroom meantime, telling the old
man good-bye, that he would return in the morning. ‘But where
do you go, why must you live by such a schedule!’ the old man
demanded, and Lestat became impatient. Before this, he’d been
gracious to the old man, almost to the point of sickening one, but
now he became a bully. ‘I take care of you, don’t I? I’ve put a
better roof over your head than you ever put over mine! If I want
to sleep all day and drink all night, I’ll do it, damn you!’ The old
man started to whine. Only my peculiar state of emotions and
most unusual feeling of exhaustion kept me from disapproving. I
was watching the scene through the open door, enthralled with
the colors of the counterpane and the positive riot of color in the
old man’s face. His blue veins pulsed beneath his pink and grayish
esh. I found even the yellow of his teeth appealing to me, and I
became almost hypnotized by the quivering of his lip. ‘Such a son,
such a son,’ he said, never suspecting, of course, the true nature of
his son. ‘All right, then, go. I know you keep a woman
somewhere; you go to see her as soon as her husband leaves in
the morning. Give me my rosary. What’s happened to my rosary?’
Lestat said something blasphemous and gave him the rosary….”
“But…” the boy started.
“Yes?” said the vampire. “I’m afraid I don’t allow you to ask
enough questions.”
“I was going to ask, rosaries have crosses on them, don’t they?”
“Oh, the rumor about crosses!” the vampire laughed. “You refer
to our being afraid of crosses?”
“Unable to look on them, I thought,” said the boy.
“Nonsense, my friend, sheer nonsense. I can look on anything I
like. And I rather like looking on crucixes in particular.”
“And what about the rumor about keyholes? That you can…
become steam and go through them.”
“I wish I could,” laughed the vampire. “How positively
delightful. I should like to pass through all manner of dierent
keyholes and feel the tickle of their peculiar shapes. No.” He
shook his head. “That is, how would you say today…bullshit?”
The boy laughed despite himself. Then his face grew serious.
“You mustn’t be so shy with me,” the vampire said. “What is
it?”
“The story about stakes through the heart,” said the boy, his
cheeks coloring slightly.
“The same,” said the vampire. “Bull-shit,” he said, carefully
articulating both syllables, so that the boy smiled. “No magical
power whatsoever. Why don’t you smoke one of your cigarettes? I
see you have them in your shirt pocket.”
“Oh, thank you,” the boy said, as if it were a marvellous
suggestion. But once he had the cigarette to his lips, his hands
were trembling so badly that he mangled the rst fragile book
match.
“Allow me,” said the vampire. And, taking the book, he quickly
put a lighted match to the boy’s cigarette. The boy inhaled, his
eyes on the vampire’s ngers. Now the vampire withdrew across
the table with a soft rustling of garments. “There’s an ashtray on
the basin,” he said, and the boy moved nervously to get it. He
stared at the few butts in it for a moment, and then, seeing the
small waste basket beneath, he emptied the ashtray and quickly
set it on the table. His ngers left damp marks on the cigarette
when he put it down. “Is this your room?” he asked.
“No,” answered the vampire. “Just a room.”
“What happened then?” the boy asked. The vampire appeared
to be watching the smoke gather beneath the overhead bulb.
“Ah…we went back to New Orleans posthaste,” he said. “Lestat
had his con in a miserable room near the ramparts.”
“And you did get into the con?”
“I had no choice. I begged Lestat to let me stay in the closet, but
he laughed, astonished. ‘Don’t you know what you are?’ he asked.
‘But is it magical? Must it have this shape?’ I pleaded. Only to
hear him laugh again. I couldn’t bear the idea; but as we argued, I
realized I had no real fear. It was a strange realization. All my life
I’d feared closed places. Born and bred in French houses with
lofty ceilings and oor-length windows, I had a dread of being
enclosed. I felt uncomfortable even in the confessional in church.
It was a normal enough fear. And now I realized as I protested to
Lestat, I did not actually feel this anymore. I was simply
remembering it. Hanging on to it from habit, from a deciency of
ability to recognize my present and exhilarating freedom. ‘You’re
carrying on badly,’ Lestat said nally. ‘And it’s almost dawn. I
should let you die. You will die, you know. The sun will destroy
the blood I’ve given you, in every tissue, every vein. But you
shouldn’t be feeling this fear at all. I think you’re like a man who
loses an arm or a leg and keeps insisting that he can feel pain
where the arm or leg used to be.’ Well, that was positively the
most intelligent and useful thing Lestat ever said in my presence,
and it brought me around at once. ‘Now, I’m getting into the
con,’ he nally said to me in his most disdainful tone, ‘and you
will get in on top of me if you know what’s good for you.’ And I
did. I lay face-down on him, utterly confused by my absence of
dread and lled with a distaste for being so close to him,
handsome and intriguing though he was. And he shut the lid.
Then I asked him if I was completely dead. My body was tingling
and itching all over. ‘No, you’re not then,’ he said. ‘When you are,
you’ll only hear and see it changing and feel nothing. You should
be dead by tonight. Go to sleep.’ ”
“Was he right? Were you…dead when you woke up?”
“Yes, changed, I should say. As obviously I am alive. My body
was dead. It was some time before it became absolutely cleansed
of the uids and matter it no longer needed, but it was dead. And
with the realization of it came another stage in my divorce from
human emotions. The rst thing which became apparent to me,
even while Lestat and I were loading the con into a hearse and
stealing another con from a mortuary, was that I did not like
Lestat at all. I was far from being his equal yet, but I was
innitely closer to him than I had been before the death of my
body. I can’t really make this clear to you for the obvious reason
that you are now as I was before my body died. You cannot
understand. But before I died, Lestat was absolutely the most
overwhelming experience I’d ever had. Your cigarette has become
one long cylindrical ash.”
“Oh!” The boy quickly ground the lter into the glass. “You
mean that when the gap was closed between you, he lost his…
spell?” he asked, his eyes quickly xed on the vampire, his hands
now producing a cigarette and match much more easily than
before.
“Yes, that’s correct,” said the vampire with obvious pleasure.
“The trip back to Pointe du Lac was thrilling. And the constant
chatter of Lestat was positively the most boring and disheartening
thing I experienced. Of course as I said, I was far from being his
equal. I had my dead limbs to contend with…to use his
comparison. And I learned that on that very night, when I had to
make my rst kill.”
The vampire reached across the table now and gently brushed
an ash from the boy’s lapel, and the boy stared at his withdrawing
hand in alarm. “Excuse me,” said the vampire. “I didn’t mean to
frighten you.”
“Excuse me,” said the boy. “I just got the impression suddenly
that your arm was…abnormally long. You reached so far without
moving!”
“No,” said the vampire, resting his hands again on his crossed
knees. “I moved forward much too fast for you to see. It was an
illusion.”
“You moved forward? But you didn’t. You were sitting just as
you are now, with your back against the chair.”
“No,” repeated the vampire rmly. “I moved forward as I told
you. Here, I’ll do it again.” And he did it again, and the boy stared
with the same mixture of confusion and fear. “You still didn’t see
it,” said the vampire. “But, you see, if you look at my outstretched
arm now, it’s really not remarkably long at all.” And he raised his
arm, rst nger pointing heavenward as if he were an angel about
to give the Word of the Lord. “You have experienced a
fundamental dierence between the way you see and I see. My
gesture appeared slow and somewhat languid to me. And the
sound of my nger brushing your coat was quite audible. Well, I
didn’t mean to frighten you, I confess. But perhaps you can see
from this that my return to Pointe du Lac was a feast of new
experiences, the mere swaying of a tree branch in the wind a
delight.”
“Yes,” said the boy; but he was still visibly shaken. The vampire
eyed him for a moment, and then he said, “I was telling you…”
“About your rst kill,” said the boy.
“Yes. I should say rst, however, that the plantation was in a
state of pandemonium. The overseer’s body had been found and
so had the blind old man in the master bedroom, and no one
could explain the blind old man’s presence. And no one had been
able to nd me in New Orleans. My sister had contacted the
police, and several of them were at Pointe du Lac when I arrived.
It was already quite dark, naturally, and Lestat quickly explained
to me that I must not let the police see me in even minimal light,
especially not with my body in its present remarkable state; so I
talked to them in the avenue of oaks before the plantation house,
ignoring their requests that we go inside. I explained I’d been to
Pointe du Lac the night before and the blind old man was my
guest. As for the overseer, he had not been here, but had gone to
New Orleans on business.
“After that was settled, during which my new detachment
served me admirably, I had the problem of the plantation itself.
My slaves were in a state of complete confusion, and no work had
been done all day. We had a large plant then for the making of
the indigo dye, and the overseer’s management had been most
important. But I had several extremely intelligent slaves who
might have done his job just as well a long time before, if I had
recognized their intelligence and not feared their African
appearance and manner. I studied them clearly now and gave the
management of things over to them. To the best, I gave the
overseer’s house on a promise. Two of the young women were
brought back into the house from the elds to care for Lestat’s
father, and I told them I wanted as much privacy as possible and
they would all of them be rewarded not only for service but for
leaving me and Lestat absolutely alone. I did not realize at the
time that these slaves would be the rst, and possibly the only
ones, to ever suspect that Lestat and I were not ordinary
creatures. I failed to realize that their experience with the
supernatural was far greater than that of white men. In my own
inexperience I still thought of them as childlike savages barely
domesticated by slavery. I made a bad mistake. But let me keep to
my story. I was going to tell you about my rst kill. Lestat
bungled it with his characteristic lack of common sense.”
“Bungled it?” asked the boy.
“I should never have started with human beings. But this was
something I had to learn by myself. Lestat had us plunge headlong
into the swamps right after the police and the slaves were settled.
It was very late, and the slave cabins were completely dark. We
soon lost sight of the lights of Pointe du Lac altogether, and I
became very agitated. It was the same thing again: remembered
fears, confusion. Lestat, had he any native intelligence, might
have explained things to me patiently and gently—that I had no
need to fear the swamps, that to snakes and insects I was utterly
invulnerable, and that I must concentrate on my new ability to
see in total darkness. Instead, he harassed me with
condemnations. He was concerned only with our victims, with
nishing my initiation and getting on with it.
“And when we nally came upon our victims, he rushed me
into action. They were a small camp of runaway slaves. Lestat had
visited them before and picked o perhaps a fourth of their
number by watching from the dark for one of them to leave the
re, or by taking them in their sleep. They knew absolutely
nothing of Lestat’s presence. We had to watch for well over an
hour before one of the men—they were all men—nally left the
clearing and came just a few paces into the trees. He unhooked
his pants now and attended to an ordinary physical necessity; and
as he turned to go, Lestat shook me and said, ‘Take him.’ ” The
vampire smiled at the boy’s wide eyes. “I think I was about as
horrorstruck as you would be,” he said. “But I didn’t know then
that I might kill animals instead of humans. I said quickly I could
not possibly take him. And the slave heard me speak. He turned,
his back to the distant re, and peered into the dark. Then quickly
and silently, he drew a long knife out of his belt. He was naked
except for the pants and the belt, a tall, strong-armed, sleek young
man. He said something in the French patois, and then he stepped
forward. I realized that, though I saw him clearly in the dark, he
could not see us. Lestat stepped in back of him with a swiftness
that baed me and got a hold around his neck while he pinned
his left arm. The slave cried out and tried to throw Lestat o. He
sank his teeth now, and the slave froze as if from snakebite. He
sank to his knees, and Lestat fed fast as the other slaves came
running. ‘You sicken me,’ he said when he got back to me. It was
as if we were black insects utterly camouaged in the night,
watching the slaves move, oblivious to us, discover the wounded
man, drag him back, fan out in the foliage searching for the
attacker. ‘Come on, we have to get another one before they all
return to camp,’ he said. And quickly we set o after one man
who was separated from the others. I was still terribly agitated,
convinced I couldn’t bring myself to attack and feeling no urge to
do so. There were many things, as I mention, which Lestat might
have said and done. He might have made the experience rich in so
many ways. But he did not.”
“What could he have done?” the boy asked. “What do you
mean?”
“Killing is no ordinary act,” said the vampire. “One doesn’t
simply glut oneself on blood.” He shook his head. “It is the
experience of another’s life for certain, and often the experience
of the loss of that life through the blood, slowly. It is again and
again the experience of that loss of my own life, which I
experienced when I sucked the blood from Lestat’s wrist and felt
his heart pound with my heart. It is again and again a celebration
of that experience; because for vampires that is the ultimate
experience.” He said this most seriously, as if he were arguing
with someone who held a dierent view. “I don’t think Lestat ever
appreciated that, though how he could not, I don’t know. Let me
say he appreciated something, but very little, I think, of what
there is to know. In any event, he took no pains to remind me
now of what I’d felt when I clamped onto his wrist for life itself
and wouldn’t let it go; or to pick and choose a place for me where
I might experience my rst kill with some measure of quiet and
dignity. He rushed headlong through the encounter as if it were
something to put behind us as quickly as possible, like so many
yards of the road. Once he had caught the slave, he gagged him
and held him, baring his neck. ‘Do it,’ he said. ‘You can’t turn
back now.’ Overcome with revulsion and weak with frustration, I
obeyed. I knelt beside the bent, struggling man and, clamping
both my hands on his shoulders, I went into his neck. My teeth
had only just begun to change, and I had to tear his esh, not
puncture it; but once the wound was made, the blood owed. And
once that happened, once I was locked to it, drinking…all else
vanished.
“Lestat and the swamp and the noise of the distant camp meant
nothing. Lestat might have been an insect, buzzing, lighting, then
vanishing in signicance. The sucking mesmerized me; the warm
struggling of the man was soothing to the tension of my hands;
and there came the beating of the drum again, which was the
drumbeat of his heart—only this time it beat in perfect rhythm
with the drumbeat of my own heart, the two resounding in every
ber of my being, until the beat began to grow slower and slower,
so that each was a soft rumble that threatened to go on without
end. I was drowsing, falling into weightlessness; and then Lestat
pulled me back. ‘He’s dead, you idiot!’ he said with his
characteristic charm and tact. ‘You don’t drink after they’re dead!
Understand that!’ I was in a frenzy for a moment, not myself,
insisting to him that the man’s heart still beat, and I was in an
agony to clamp onto him again. I ran my hands over his chest,
then grabbed at his wrists. I would have cut into his wrist if Lestat
hadn’t pulled me to my feet and slapped my face. This slap was
astonishing. It was not painful in the ordinary way. It was a
sensational shock of another sort, a rapping of the senses, so that I
spun in confusion and found myself helpless and staring, my back
against a cypress, the night pulsing with insects in my ears. ‘You’ll
die if you do that,’ Lestat was saying. ‘He’ll suck you right down
into death with him if you cling to him in death. And now you’ve
drunk too much, besides; you’ll be ill.’ His voice grated on me. I
had the urge to throw myself on him suddenly, but I was feeling
just what he’d said. There was a grinding pain in my stomach, as
if some whirlpool there were sucking my insides into itself. It was
the blood passing too rapidly into my own blood, but I didn’t
know it. Lestat moved through the night now like a cat and I
followed him, my head throbbing, this pain in my stomach no
better when we reached the house of Pointe du Lac.
“As we sat at the table in the parlor, Lestat dealing a game of
solitaire on the polished wood, I sat there staring at him with
contempt. He was mumbling nonsense. I would get used to
killing, he said; it would be nothing. I must not allow myself to be
shaken. I was reacting too much as if the ‘mortal coil’ had not
been shaken o. I would become accustomed to things all too
quickly. ‘Do you think so?’ I asked him nally. I really had no
interest in his answer. I understood now the dierence between
us. For me the experience of killing had been cataclysmic. So had
that of sucking Lestat’s wrist. These experiences so overwhelmed
and so changed my view of everything around me, from the
picture of my brother on the parlor wall to the sight of a single
star in the topmost pane of the French window, that I could not
imagine another vampire taking them for granted. I was altered,
permanently; I knew it. And what I felt, most profoundly, for
everything, even the sound of the playing cards being laid down
one by one upon the shining rows of the solitaire, was respect.
Lestat felt the opposite. Or he felt nothing. He was the sow’s ear
out of which nothing ne could be made. As boring as a mortal,
as trivial and unhappy as a mortal, he chattered over the game,
belittling my experience, utterly locked against the possibility of
any experience of his own. By morning, I realized that I was his
complete superior and I had been sadly cheated in having him for
a teacher. He must guide me through the necessary lessons, if
there were any more real lessons, and I must tolerate in him a
frame of mind which was blasphemous to life itself. I felt cold
towards him. I had no contempt in superiority. Only a hunger for
new experience, for that which was beautiful and as devastating
as my kill. And I saw that if I were to maximize every experience
available to me, I must exert my own powers over my learning.
Lestat was of no use.
“It was well past midnight when I nally rose out of the chair
and went out on the gallery. The moon was large over the
cypresses, and the candlelight poured from the open doors. The
thick plastered pillars and walls of the house had been freshly
whitewashed, the oorboards freshly swept, and a summer rain
had left the night clean and sparkling with drops of water. I
leaned against the end pillar of the gallery, my head touching the
soft tendrils of a jasmine which grew there in constant battle with
a wisteria, and I thought of what lay before me throughout the
world and throughout time, and resolved to go about it delicately
and reverently, learning that from each thing which would take
me best to another. What this meant, I wasn’t sure myself. Do you
understand me when I say I did not wish to rush headlong into
experience, that what I’d felt as a vampire was far too powerful to
be wasted?”
“Yes,” said the boy eagerly. “It sounds as if it was like being in
love.”
The vampire’s eyes gleamed. “That’s correct. It is like love.” He
smiled. “And I tell you my frame of mind that night so you can
know there are profound dierences between vampires, and how I
came to take a dierent approach from Lestat. You must
understand I did not snub him because he did not appreciate his
experience. I simply could not understand how such feelings could
be wasted. But then Lestat did something which was to show me a
way to go about my learning.
“He had more than a casual appreciation of the wealth at
Pointe du Lac. He’d been much pleased by the beauty of the china
used for his father’s supper; and he liked the feel of the velvet
drapes, and he traced the patterns of the carpets with his toe. And
now he took from one of the china closets a crystal glass and said,
‘I do miss glasses.’ Only he said this with an impish delight that
caused me to study him with a hard eye. I disliked him intensely!
‘I want to show you a little trick,’ he said. ‘That is, if you like
glasses.’ And after setting it on the card table he came out on the
gallery where I stood and changed his manner again into that of a
stalking animal, eyes piercing the dark beyond the lights of the
house, peering down under the arching branches of the oaks. In
an instant, he had vaulted the railing and dropped softly on the
dirt below, and then lunged into the blackness to catch something
in both his hands. When he stood before me with it, I gasped to
see it was a rat. ‘Don’t be such a damned idiot,’ he said. ‘Haven’t
you ever seen a rat?’ It was a huge, struggling eld rat with a long
tail. He held its neck so it couldn’t bite. ‘Rats can be quite nice,’
he said. And he took the rat to the wine glass, slashed its throat,
and lled the glass rapidly with blood. The rat then went hurtling
over the gallery railing, and Lestat held the wine glass to the
candle triumphantly. ‘You may well have to live o rats from time
to time, so wipe that expression o your face,’ he said. ‘Rats,
chickens, cattle. Travelling by ship, you damn well better live o
rats, if you don’t wish to cause such a panic on board that they
search your con. You damn well better keep the ship clean of
rats.’ And then he sipped the blood as delicately as if it were
burgundy. He made a slight face. ‘It gets cold so fast.’
“ ‘Do you mean, then, we can live from animals?’ I asked.
“ ‘Yes.’ He drank it all down and then casually threw the glass
at the replace. I stared at the fragments. ‘You don’t mind, do
you?’ He gestured to the broken glass with a sarcastic smile. ‘I
surely hope you don’t, because there’s nothing much you can do
about it if you do mind.’
“ ‘I can throw you and your father out of Pointe du Lac, if I
mind,’ I said. I believe this was my rst show of temper.
“ ‘Why would you do that?’ he asked with mock alarm. ‘You
don’t know everything yet…do you?’ He was laughing then and
walking slowly about the room. He ran his ngers over the satin
nish of the spinet. ‘Do you play?’ he asked.
“I said something like, ‘Don’t touch it!’ and he laughed at me.
‘I’ll touch it if I like!’ he said. ‘You don’t know, for example, all
the ways you can die. And dying now would be such a calamity,
wouldn’t it?’
“ ‘There must be someone else in the world to teach me these
things,’ I said. ‘Certainly you’re not the only vampire! And your
father, he’s perhaps seventy. You couldn’t have been a vampire
long, so someone must have instructed you….’
“ ‘And do you think you can nd other vampires by yourself?
They might see you coming, my friend, but you won’t see them.
No, I don’t think you have much choice about things at this point,
friend. I’m your teacher and you need me, and there isn’t much
you can do about it either way. And we both have people to
provide for. My father needs a doctor, and then there is the
matter of your mother and sister. Don’t get any mortal notions
about telling them you are a vampire. Just provide for them and
for my father, which means that tomorrow night you had better
kill fast and then attend to the business of your plantation. Now
to bed. We both sleep in the same room; it makes for far less risk.’
“ ‘No, you secure the bedroom for yourself,’ I said. ‘I’ve no
intention of staying in the same room with you.’
“He became furious. ‘Don’t do anything stupid, Louis. I warn
you. There’s nothing you can do to defend yourself once the sun
rises, nothing. Separate rooms mean separate security. Double
precautions and double chance of notice.’ He then said a score of
things to frighten me into complying, but he might as well have
been talking to the walls. I watched him intently, but I didn’t
listen to him. He appeared frail and stupid to me, a man made of
dried twigs with a thin, carping voice. ‘I sleep alone,’ I said, and
gently put my hand around the candle ames one by one. ‘It’s
almost morning!’ he insisted.
“ ‘So lock yourself in,’ I said, embracing my con, hoisting it
and carrying it down the brick stairs. I could hear the locks
snapping on the French doors above, the swoosh of the drapes.
The sky was pale but still sprinkled with stars, and another light
rain blew now on the breeze from the river, speckling the
agstones. I opened the door of my brother’s oratory, shoving
back the roses and thorns which had almost sealed it, and set the
con on the stone oor before the priedieu. I could almost make
out the images of the saints on the walls. ‘Paul,’ I said softly,
addressing my brother, ‘for the rst time in my life I feel nothing
for you, nothing for your death; and for the rst time I feel
everything for you, feel the sorrow of your loss as if I never before
knew feeling.’ You see…”
The vampire turned to the boy. “For the rst time now I was
fully and completely a vampire. I shut the wood blinds at upon
the small barred windows and bolted the door. Then I climbed
into the satin-lined con, barely able to see the gleam of cloth in
the darkness, and locked myself in. That is how I became a
vampire.”
AND THERE YOU WERE,” said the boy after a pause, “with another
vampire you hated.”
“But I had to stay with him,” answered the vampire. “As I’ve
told you, he had me at a great disadvantage. He hinted there was
much I didn’t know and must know and that he alone could tell
me. But in fact, the main part of what he did teach me was
practical and not so dicult to gure out for oneself. How we
might travel, for instance, by ship, having our cons transported
for us as though they contained the remains of loved ones being
sent here or there for burial; how no one would dare to open such
a con, and we might rise from it at night to clean the ship of
rats—things of this nature. And then there were the shops and
businessmen he knew who admitted us well after hours to outt
us in the nest Paris fashions, and those agents willing to transact
nancial matters in restaurants and cabarets. And in all of these
mundane matters, Lestat was an adequate teacher. What manner
of man he’d been in life, I couldn’t tell and didn’t care; but he was
for all appearances of the same class now as myself, which meant
little to me, except that it made our lives run a little more
smoothly than they might have otherwise. He had impeccable
taste, though my library to him was a ‘pile of dust,’ and he
seemed more than once to be infuriated by the sight of my
reading a book or writing some observations in a journal. ‘That’s
mortal nonsense,’ he would say to me, while at the same time
spending so much of my money to splendidly furnish Pointe du
Lac, that even I, who cared nothing for the money, was forced to
wince. And in entertaining visitors at Pointe du Lac—those
hapless travellers who came up the river road by horseback or
carriage begging accommodations for the night, sporting letters of
introduction from other planters or ocials in New Orleans—to
these he was so gentle and polite that it made things far easier for
me, who found myself hopelessly locked to him and jarred over
and over by his viciousness.”
“But he didn’t harm these men?” asked the boy.
“Oh yes, often, he did. But I’ll tell you a little secret if I may,
which applies not only to vampires, but to generals, soldiers, and
kings. Most of us would much rather see somebody die than be
the object of rudeness under our roofs. Strange…yes. But very
true, I assure you. That Lestat hunted for mortals every night, I
knew. But had he been savage and ugly to my family, my guests,
and my slaves, I couldn’t have endured it. He was not. He seemed
particularly to delight in the visitors. But he said we must spare
no expense where our families were concerned. And he seemed to
me to push luxury upon his father to an almost ludicrous point.
The old blind man must be told constantly how ne and
expensive were his bed jackets and robes and what imported
draperies had just been xed to his bed and what French and
Spanish wines we had in the cellar and how much the plantation
yielded even in bad years when the coast talked of abandoning
the indigo production altogether and going into sugar. But then at
other times he would bully the old man, as I mentioned. He
would erupt into such rage that the old man whimpered like a
child. ‘Don’t I take care of you in baronial splendor!’ Lestat would
shout at him. ‘Don’t I provide for your every want! Stop whining
to me about going to church or old friends! Such nonsense. Your
old friends are dead. Why don’t you die and leave me and my
bankroll in peace!’ The old man would cry softly that these things
meant so little to him in old age. He would have been content on
his little farm forever. I wanted often to ask him later, ‘Where was
this farm? From where did you come to Louisiana?’ to get some
clue to that place where Lestat might have known another
vampire. But I didn’t dare to bring these things up, lest the old
man start crying and Lestat become enraged. But these ts were
no more frequent than periods of near obsequious kindness when
Lestat would bring his father supper on a tray and feed him
patiently while talking of the weather and the New Orleans news
and the activities of my mother and sister. It was obvious that a
great gulf existed between father and son, both in education and
renement, but how it came about, I could not quite guess. And
from this whole matter, I achieved a somewhat consistent
detachment.
“Existence, as I’ve said, was possible. There was always the
promise behind his mocking smile that he knew great things or
terrible things, had commerce with levels of darkness I could not
possibly guess at. And all the time, he belittled me and attacked
me for my love of the senses, my reluctance to kill, and the near
swoon which killing could produce in me. He laughed
uproariously when I discovered that I could see myself in a mirror
and that crosses had no eect upon me, and would taunt me with
sealed lips when I asked about God or the devil. ‘I’d like to meet
the devil some night,’ he said once with a malignant smile. ‘I’d
chase him from here to the wilds of the Pacic. I am the devil.’
And when I was aghast at this, he went into peals of laughter. But
what happened was simply that in my distaste for him I came to
ignore and suspect him, and yet to study him with a detached
fascination. Sometimes I’d nd myself staring at his wrist from
which I’d drawn my vampire life, and I would fall into such a
stillness that my mind seemed to leave my body or rather my
body to become my mind; and then he would see me and stare at
me with a stubborn ignorance of what I felt and longed to know
and, reaching over, shake me roughly out of it. I bore this with an
overt detachment unknown to me in mortal life and came to
understand this as a part of vampire nature: that I might sit at
home at Pointe du Lac and think for hours of my brother’s mortal
life and see it short and rounded in unfathomable darkness,
understanding now the vain and senseless wasting passion with
which I’d mourned his loss and turned on other mortals like a
maddened animal. All that confusion was then like dancers
frenzied in a fog; and now, now in this strange vampire nature, I
felt a profound sadness. But I did not brood over this. Let me not
give you that impression, for brooding would have been to me the
most terrible waste; but rather I looked around me at all the
mortals that I knew and saw all life as precious, condemning all
fruitless guilt and passion that would let it slip through the ngers
like sand. It was only now as a vampire that I did come to know
my sister, forbidding her the plantation for the city life which she
so needed in order to know her own time of life and her own
beauty and come to marry, not brood for our lost brother or my
going away or become a nursemaid for our mother. And I
provided for them all they might need or want, nding even the
most trivial request worth my immediate attention. My sister
laughed at the transformation in me when we would meet at
night and I would take her from our at out the narrow wooden
streets to walk along the tree-lined levee in the moonlight,
savoring the orange blossoms and the caressing warmth, talking
for hours of her most secret thoughts and dreams, those little
fantasies she dared tell no one and would even whisper to me
when we sat in the dim-lit parlor entirely alone. And I would see
her sweet and palpable before me, a shimmering, precious
creature soon to grow old, soon to die, soon to lose these
moments that in their intangibility promised to us, wrongly…
wrongly, an immortality. As if it were our very birthright, which
we could not come to grasp the meaning of until this time of
middle life when we looked on only as many years ahead as
already lay behind us. When every moment, every moment must
be rst known and then savored.
“It was detachment that made this possible, a sublime
loneliness with which Lestat and I moved through the world of
mortal men. And all material troubles passed from us. I should tell
you the practical nature of it.
“Lestat had always known how to steal from victims chosen for
sumptuous dress and other promising signs of extravagance. But
the great problems of shelter and secrecy had been for him a
terrible struggle. I suspected that beneath his gentleman’s veneer
he was painfully ignorant of the most simple nancial matters.
But I was not. And so he could acquire cash at any moment and I
could invest it. If he were not picking the pocket of a dead man in
an alley, he was at the greatest gambling tables in the richest
salons of the city, using his vampire keenness to suck gold and
dollars and deeds of property from young planters’ sons who
found him deceptive in his friendship and alluring in his charm.
But this had never given him the life he wanted, and so for that
he had ushered me into the preternatural world that he might
acquire an investor and manager for whom these skills of mortal
life became most valuable in this life after.
“But, let me describe New Orleans, as it was then, and as it was
to become, so you can understand how simple our lives were.
There was no city in America like New Orleans. It was lled not
only with the French and Spanish of all classes who had formed in
part its peculiar aristocracy, but later with immigrants of all
kinds, the Irish and the German in particular. Then there were not
only the black slaves, yet unhomogenized and fantastical in their
dierent tribal garb and manners, but the great growing class of
the free people of color, those marvellous people of our mixed
blood and that of the islands, who produced a magnicent and
unique caste of craftsmen, artists, poets, and renowned feminine
beauty. And then there were the Indians, who covered the levee
on summer days selling herbs and crafted wares. And drifting
through all, through this medley of languages and colors, were
the people of the port, the sailors of the ships, who came in great
waves to spend their money in the cabarets, to buy for the night
the beautiful women both dark and light, to dine on the best of
Spanish and French cooking and drink the imported wines of the
world. Then add to these, within years after my transformation,
the Americans, who built the city up river from the old French
Quarter with magnicent Grecian houses which gleamed in the
moonlight like temples. And, of course, the planters, always the
planters, coming to town with their families in shining landaus to
buy evening gowns and silver and gems, to crowd the narrow
streets on the way to the old French Opera House and the Théâtre
d’Orléans and the St. Louis Cathedral, from whose open doors
came the chants of High Mass over the crowds of the Place
d’Armes on Sundays, over the noise and bickering of the French
Market, over the silent, ghostly drift of the ships along the raised
waters of the Mississippi, which owed against the levee above
the ground of New Orleans itself, so that the ships appeared to
oat against the sky.
“This was New Orleans, a magical and magnicent place to
live. In which a vampire, richly dressed and gracefully walking
through the pools of light of one gas lamp after another might
attract no more notice in the evening than hundreds of other
exotic creatures—if he attracted any at all, if anyone stopped to
whisper behind a fan, ‘That man…how pale, how he gleams…
how he moves. It’s not natural!’ A city in which a vampire might
be gone before the words had even passed the lips, seeking out
the alleys in which he could see like a cat, the darkened bars in
which sailors slept with their heads on the tables, great high-
ceilinged hotel rooms where a lone gure might sit, her feet upon
an embroidered cushion, her legs covered with a lace
counterpane, her head bent under the tarnished light of a single
candle, never seeing the great shadow move across the plaster
owers of the ceiling, never seeing the long white ngers reached
to press the fragile ame.
“Remarkable, if for nothing else, because of this, that all of
those men and women who stayed for any reason left behind
them some monument, some structure of marble and brick and
stone that still stands; so that even when the gas lamps went out
and the planes came in and the oce buildings crowded the
blocks of Canal Street, something irreducible of beauty and
romance remained; not in every street perhaps, but in so many
that the landscape is for me the landscape of those times always,
and walking now in the starlit streets of the Quarter or the Garden
District I am in those times again. I suppose that is the nature of
the monument. Be it a small house or a mansion of Corinthian
columns and wrought-iron lace. The monument does not say that
this or that man walked here. No, that what he felt in one time in
one spot continues. The moon that rose over New Orleans then
still rises. As long as the monuments stand, it still rises. The
feeling, at least here…and there…it remains the same.”
The vampire appeared sad. He sighed, as if he doubted what he
had just said. “What was it?” he asked suddenly as if he were
slightly tired. “Yes, money. Lestat and I had to make money. And
I was telling you that he could steal. But it was investment
afterwards that mattered. What we accumulated we must use. But
I go ahead of myself. I killed animals. But I’ll get to that in a
moment. Lestat killed humans all the time, sometimes two or
three a night, sometimes more. He would drink from one just
enough to satisfy a momentary thirst, and then go on to another.
The better the human, as he would say in his vulgar way, the
more he liked it. A fresh young girl, that was his favorite food the
rst of the evening; but the triumphant kill for Lestat was a young
man. A young man around your age would have appealed to him
in particular.”
“Me?” the boy whispered. He had leaned forward on his elbows
to peer into the vampire’s eyes, and now he drew up.
“Yes,” the vampire went on, as if he hadn’t observed the boy’s
change of expression. “You see, they represented the greatest loss
to Lestat, because they stood on the threshold of the maximum
possibility of life. Of course, Lestat didn’t understand this himself.
I came to understand it. Lestat understood nothing.
“I shall give you a perfect example of what Lestat liked. Up the
river from us was the Freniere plantation, a magnicent spread of
land which had great hopes of making a fortune in sugar, just
shortly after the rening process had been invented. I presume
you know sugar was rened in Louisiana. There is something
perfect and ironic about it, this land which I loved producing
rened sugar. I mean this more unhappily than I think you know.
This rened sugar is a poison. It was like the essence of life in
New Orleans, so sweet that it can be fatal, so richly enticing that
all other values are forgotten….But as I was saying, up river from
us lived the Frenieres, a great old French family which had
produced in this generation ve young women and one young
man. Now, three of the young women were destined not to marry,
but two were young enough still and all depended upon the
young man. He was to manage the plantation as I had done for
my mother and sister; he was to negotiate marriages, to put
together dowries when the entire fortune of the place rode
precariously on the next year’s sugar crop; he was to bargain,
ght, and keep at a distance the entire material world for the
world of Freniere. Lestat decided he wanted him. And when fate
alone nearly cheated Lestat, he went wild. He risked his own life
to get the Freniere boy, who had become involved in a duel. He
had insulted a young Spanish Creole at a ball. The whole thing
was nothing, really; but like most young Creoles this one was
willing to die for nothing. They were both willing to die for
nothing. The Freniere household was in an uproar. You must
understand, Lestat knew this perfectly. Both of us had hunted the
Freniere plantation, Lestat for slaves and chicken thieves and me
for animals.”
“You were killing only animals?”
“Yes. But I’ll come to that later, as I said. We both knew the
plantation, and I had indulged in one of the greatest pleasures of a
vampire, that of watching people unbeknownst to them. I knew
the Freniere sisters as I knew the magnicent rose trees around
my brother’s oratory. They were a unique group of women. Each
in her own way was as smart as the brother; and one of them, I
shall call her Babette, was not only as smart as her brother, but
far wiser. Yet none had been educated to care for the plantation;
none understood even the simplest facts about its nancial state.
All were totally dependent upon young Freniere, and all knew it.
And so, larded with their love for him, their passionate belief that
he hung the moon and that any conjugal love they might ever
know would only be a pale reection of their love for him, larded
with this was a desperation as strong as the will to survive. If
Freniere died in the duel, the plantation would collapse. Its fragile
economy, a life of splendor based on the perennial mortgaging of
the next year’s crop, was in his hands alone. So you can imagine
the panic and misery in the Freniere household the night that the
son went to town to ght the appointed duel. And now picture
Lestat, gnashing his teeth like a comic-opera devil because he was
not going to kill the young Freniere.”
“You mean then…that you felt for the Freniere women?”
“I felt for them totally,” said the vampire. “Their position was
agonizing. And I felt for the boy. That night he locked himself in
his father’s study and made a will. He knew full well that if he fell
under the rapier at four a.m. the next morning, his family would
fall with him. He deplored his situation and yet could do nothing
to help it. To run out on the duel would not only mean social ruin
for him, but would probably have been impossible. The other
young man would have pursued him until he was forced to ght.
When he left the plantation at midnight, he was staring into the
face of death itself with the character of a man who, having only
one path to follow, has resolved to follow it with perfect courage.
He would either kill the Spanish boy or die; it was unpredictable,
despite all his skill. His face reected a depth of feeling and
wisdom I’d never seen on the face of any of Lestat’s struggling
victims. I had my rst battle with Lestat then and there. I’d
prevented him from killing the boy for months, and now he meant
to kill him before the Spanish boy could.
“We were on horseback, racing after the young Freniere
towards New Orleans, Lestat bent on overtaking him, I bent on
overtaking Lestat. Well, the duel, as I told you, was scheduled for
four a.m. On the edge of the swamp just beyond the city’s
northern gate. And arriving there just shortly before four, we had
precious little time to return to Pointe du Lac, which meant our
own lives were in danger. I was incensed at Lestat as never
before, and he was determined to get the boy. ‘Give him his
chance!’ I was insisting, getting hold of Lestat before he could
approach the boy. It was midwinter, bitter-cold and damp in the
swamps, one volley of icy rain after another sweeping the clearing
where the duel was to be fought. Of course, I did not fear these
elements in the sense that you might; they did not numb me, nor
threaten me with mortal shivering or illness. But vampires feel
cold as acutely as humans, and the blood of the kill is often the
rich, sensual alleviation of that cold. But what concerned me that
morning was not the pain I felt, but the excellent cover of
darkness these elements provided, which made Freniere extremely
vulnerable to Lestat’s attack. All he need do would be to step
away from his two friends towards the swamp and Lestat might
take him. And so I physically grappled with Lestat. I held him.”
“But towards all this you had detachment, distance?”
“Hmmm…” The vampire sighed. “Yes. I had it, and with it a
supremely resolute anger. To glut himself upon the life of an
entire family was to me Lestat’s supreme act of utter contempt
and disregard for all he should have seen with a vampire’s depth.
So I held him in the dark, where he spit at me and cursed at me;
and young Freniere took his rapier from his friend and second and
went out on the slick, wet grass to meet his opponent. There was
a brief conversation, then the duel commenced. In moments, it
was over. Freniere had mortally wounded the other boy with a
swift thrust to the chest. And he knelt in the grass, bleeding,
dying, shouting something unintelligible at Freniere. The victor
simply stood there. Everyone could see there was no sweetness in
the victory. Freniere looked on death as if it were an abomination.
His companions advanced with their lanterns, urging him to come
away as soon as possible and leave the dying man to his friends.
Meantime, the wounded one would allow no one to touch him.
And then, as Freniere’s group turned to go, the three of them
walking heavily towards their horses, the man on the ground
drew a pistol. Perhaps I alone could see this in the powerful dark.
But, in any event, I shouted to Freniere as I ran towards the gun.
And this was all that Lestat needed. While I was lost in my
clumsiness, distracting Freniere and going for the gun itself,
Lestat, with his years of experience and superior speed, grabbed
the young man and spirited him into the cypresses. I doubt his
friends even knew what had happened. The pistol had gone o,
the wounded man had collapsed, and I was tearing through the
near-frozen marshes shouting for Lestat.
“Then I saw him. Freniere lay sprawled over the knobbed roots
of a cypress, his boots deep in the murky water, and Lestat was
still bent over him, one hand on the hand of Freniere that still
held the foil. I went to pull Lestat o, and that right hand swung
at me with such lightning speed I did not see it, did not know it
had struck me until I found myself in the water also; and, of
course, by the time I recovered, Freniere was dead. I saw him as
he lay there, his eyes closed, his lips utterly still as if he were just
sleeping. ‘Damn you!’ I began cursing Lestat. And then I started,
for the body of Freniere had begun to slip down into the marsh.
The water rose over his face and covered him completely. Lestat
was jubilant; he reminded me tersely that we had less than an
hour to get back to Pointe du Lac, and he swore revenge on me. ‘If
I didn’t like the life of a Southern planter, I’d nish you tonight. I
know a way,’ he threatened me. ‘I ought to drive your horse into
the swamps. You’d have to dig yourself a hole and smother!’ He
rode o.
“Even over all these years, I feel that anger for him like a white-
hot liquid lling my veins. I saw then what being a vampire
meant to him.”
“He was just a killer,” the boy said, his voice reecting some of
the vampire’s emotion. “No regard for anything.”
“No. Being a vampire for him meant revenge. Revenge against
life itself. Every time he took a life it was revenge. It was no
wonder, then, that he appreciated nothing. The nuances of
vampire existence weren’t even available to him because he was
focused with a maniacal vengeance upon the mortal life he’d left.
Consumed with hatred, he looked back. Consumed with envy,
nothing pleased him unless he could take it from others; and once
having it, he grew cold and dissatised, not loving the thing for
itself; and so he went after something else. Vengeance, blind and
sterile and contemptible.
“But I’ve spoken to you about the Freniere sisters. It was almost
half past ve when I reached their plantation. Dawn would come
shortly after six, but I was almost home. I slipped onto the upper
gallery of their house and saw them all gathered in the parlor;
they had never even dressed for bed. The candles burnt low, and
they sat already as mourners, waiting for the word. They were all
dressed in black, as was their at-home custom, and in the dark the
black shapes of their dresses massed together with their raven
hair, so that in the glow of the candles their faces appeared as ve
soft, shimmering apparitions, each uniquely sad, each uniquely
courageous. Babette’s face alone appeared resolute. It was as if
she had already made up her mind to take the burdens of Freniere
if her brother died, and she had that same expression on her face
now which had been on her brother’s when he mounted to leave
for the duel. What lay ahead of her was nearly impossible. What
lay ahead was the nal death of which Lestat was guilty. So I did
something then which caused me great risk. I made myself known
to her. I did this by playing the light. As you can see, my face is
very white and has a smooth, highly reective surface, rather like
that of polished marble.”
“Yes,” the boy nodded, and appeared ustered. “It’s very…
beautiful, actually,” said the boy. “I wonder if…but what
happened?”
“You wonder if I was a handsome man when I was alive,” said
the vampire. The boy nodded. “I was. Nothing structurally is
changed in me. Only I never knew that I was handsome. Life
whirled about me a wind of petty concerns, as I’ve said. I gazed at
nothing, not even a mirror…especially not a mirror…with a free
eye. But this is what happened. I stepped near to the pane of glass
and let the light touch my face. And this I did at a moment when
Babette’s eyes were turned towards the panes. Then I
appropriately vanished.
“Within seconds all the sisters knew a ‘strange creature’ had
been seen, a ghostlike creature, and the two slave maids
steadfastly refused to investigate. I waited out these moments
impatiently for just that which I wanted to happen: Babette nally
took a candelabrum from a side table, lit the candles, and,
scorning everyone’s fear, ventured out onto the cold gallery alone
to see what was there, her sisters hovering in the door like great,
black birds, one of them crying that the brother was dead and she
had indeed seen his ghost. Of course, you must understand that
Babette, being as strong as she was, never once attributed what
she saw to imagination or to ghosts. I let her come the length of
the dark gallery before I spoke to her, and even then I let her see
only the vague outline of my body beside one of the columns.
‘Tell your sisters to go back,’ I whispered to her. ‘I come to tell
you of your brother. Do as I say.’ She was still for an instant, and
then she turned to me and strained to see me in the dark. ‘I have
only a little time. I would not harm you for the world,’ I said. And
she obeyed. Saying it was nothing, she told them to shut the door,
and they obeyed as people obey who not only need a leader but
are desperate for one. Then I stepped into the light of Babette’s
candles.”
The boy’s eyes were wide. He put his hand to his lips. “Did you
look to her…as you do to me?” he asked.
“You ask that with such innocence,” said the vampire. “Yes, I
suppose I certainly did. Only, by candlelight I always had a less
supernatural appearance. And I made no pretense with her of
being an ordinary creature. ‘I have only minutes,’ I told her at
once. ‘But what I have to tell you is of the greatest importance.
Your brother fought bravely and won the duel—but wait. You
must know now, he is dead. Death was proverbial with him, the
thief in the night about which all his goodness or courage could
do nothing. But this is not the principal thing which I came to tell
you. It is this. You can rule the plantation and you can save it. All
that is required is that you let no one convince you otherwise.
You must assume his position despite any outcry, any talk of
convention, any talk of propriety or common sense. You must
listen to nothing. The same land is here now that was here
yesterday morning when your brother slept above. Nothing is
changed. You must take his place. If you do not, the land is lost
and the family is lost. You will be ve women on a small pension
doomed to live but half or less of what life could give you. Learn
what you must know. Stop at nothing until you have the answers.
And take my visitation to you to be your courage whenever you
waver. You must take the reins of your own life. Your brother is
dead.’
“I could see by her face that she had heard every word. She
would have questioned me had there been time, but she believed
me when I said there was not. Then I used all my skill to leave her
so swiftly I appeared to vanish. From the garden I saw her face
above in the glow of her candles. I saw her search the dark for
me, turning around and around. And then I saw her make the
Sign of the Cross and walk back to her sisters within.”
The vampire smiled. “There was absolutely no talk on the river
coast of any strange apparition to Babette Freniere, but after the
rst mourning and sad talk of the women left all alone, she
became the scandal of the neighborhood because she chose to run
the plantation on her own. She managed an immense dowry for
her younger sister, and was married herself in another year. And
Lestat and I almost never exchanged words.”
“Did he go on living at Pointe du Lac?”
“Yes. I could not be certain he’d told me all I needed to know.
And great pretense was necessary. My sister was married in my
absence, for example, while I had a ‘malarial chill,’ and something
similar overcame me the morning of my mother’s funeral.
Meantime, Lestat and I sat down to dinner each night with the old
man and made nice noises with our knives and forks, while he
told us to eat everything on our plates and not to drink our wine
too fast. With dozens of miserable headaches I would receive my
sister in a darkened bedroom, the covers up to my chin, bid her
and her husband bear with the dim light on account of the pain in
my eyes, as I entrusted to them large amounts of money to invest
for us all. Fortunately her husband was an idiot; a harmless one,
but an idiot, the product of four generations of marriages between
rst cousins.
“But though these things went well, we began to have our
problems with the slaves. They were the suspicious ones; and, as
I’ve indicated, Lestat killed anyone and everyone he chose. So
there was always some talk of mysterious death on that part of
the coast. But it was what they saw of us which began the talk,
and I heard it one evening when I was playing a shadow about
the slave cabins.
“Now, let me explain rst the character of these slaves. It was
only about seventeen ninety-ve, Lestat and I having lived there
for four years in relative quiet, I investing the money which he
acquired, increasing our lands, purchasing apartments and town
houses in New Orleans which I rented, the work of the plantation
itself producing little…more a cover for us than an investment. I
say ‘our.’ This is wrong. I never signed anything over to Lestat,
and, as you realize, I was still legally alive. But in seventeen
ninety-ve these slaves did not have the character which you’ve
seen in lms and novels of the South. They were not soft-spoken,
brown-skinned people in drab rags who spoke an English dialect.
They were Africans. And they were islanders; that is, some of
them had come from Santo Domingo. They were very black and
totally foreign; they spoke in their African tongues, and they
spoke the French patois; and when they sang, they sang African
songs which made the elds exotic and strange, always
frightening to me in my mortal life. They were superstitious and
had their own secrets and traditions. In short, they had not yet
been destroyed as Africans completely. Slavery was the curse of
their existence; but they had not been robbed yet of that which
had been characteristically theirs. They tolerated the baptism and
modest garments imposed on them by the French Catholic laws;
but in the evenings, they made their cheap fabrics into alluring
costumes, made jewelry of animal bones and bits of discarded
metal which they polished to look like gold; and the slave cabins
of Pointe du Lac were a foreign country, an African coast after
dark, in which not even the coldest overseer would want to
wander. No fear for the vampire.
“Not until one summer evening when, passing for a shadow, I
heard through the open doors of the black foreman’s cottage a
conversation which convinced me that Lestat and I slept in real
danger. The slaves knew now we were not ordinary mortals. In
hushed tones, the maids told of how, through a crack in the door,
they had seen us dine on empty plates with empty silver, lifting
empty glasses to our lips, laughing, our faces bleached and
ghostly in the candlelight, the blind man a helpless fool in our
power. Through keyholes they had seen Lestat’s con, and once
he had beaten one of them mercilessly for dawdling by the gallery
windows of his room. ‘There is no bed in there,’ they conded one
to the other with nodding heads. ‘He sleeps in the con, I know
it.’ They were convinced, on the best of grounds, of what we
were. And as for me, they’d seen me evening after evening emerge
from the oratory, which was now little more than a shapeless
mass of brick and vine, layered with owering wisteria in the
spring, wild roses in summer, moss gleaming on the old unpainted
shutters which had never been opened, spiders spinning in the
stone arches. Of course, I’d pretended to visit it in memory of
Paul, but it was clear by their speech they no longer believed such
lies. And now they attributed to us not only the deaths of slaves
found in the elds and swamps and also the dead cattle and
occasional horses, but all other strange events; even oods and
thunder were the weapons of God in a personal battle waged with
Louis and Lestat. But worse still, they were not planning to run
away. We were devils. Our power inescapable. No, we must be
destroyed. And at this gathering, where I became an unseen
member, were a number of the Freniere slaves.
“This meant word would get to the entire coast. And though I
rmly believed the entire coast to be impervious to a wave of
hysteria, I did not intend to risk notice of any kind. I hurried back
to the plantation house to tell Lestat our game of playing planter
was over. He’d have to give up his slave whip and golden napkin
ring and move into town.
“He resisted, naturally. His father was gravely ill and might not
live. He had no intention of running away from stupid slaves. ‘I’ll
kill them all,’ he said calmly, ‘in threes and fours. Some will run
away and that will be ne.’
“ ‘You’re talking madness. The fact is I want you gone from
here.’
“ ‘You want me gone! You,’ he sneered. He was building a card
palace on the dining room table with a pack of very ne French
cards. ‘You whining coward of a vampire who prowls the night
killing alley cats and rats and staring for hours at candles as if
they were people and standing in the rain like a zombie until your
clothes are drenched and you smell like old wardrobe trunks in
attics and have the look of a baed idiot at the zoo.’
“ ‘You’ve nothing more to tell me, and your insistence on
recklessness has endangered us both. I might live in that oratory
alone while this house fell to ruin. I don’t care about it!’ I told
him. Because this was quite true. ‘But you must have all the
things you never had of life and make of immortality a junk shop
in which both of us become grotesque. Now, go look at your
father and tell me how long he has to live, for that’s how long you
stay, and only if the slaves don’t rise up against us!’
“He told me then to go look at his father myself, since I was the
one who was always ‘looking,’ and I did. The old man was truly
dying. I had been spared my mother’s death, more or less, because
she had died very suddenly on an afternoon. She’d been found
with her sewing basket, seated quietly in the courtyard; she had
died as one goes to sleep. But now I was seeing a natural death
that was too slow with agony and with consciousness. And I’d
always liked the old man; he was kindly and simple and made few
demands. By day, he sat in the sun of the gallery dozing and
listening to the birds; by night, any chatter on our part kept him
company. He could play chess, carefully feeling each piece and
remembering the entire state of the board with remarkable
accuracy; and though Lestat would never play with him, I did
often. Now he lay gasping for breath, his forehead hot and wet,
the pillow around him stained with sweat. And as he moaned and
prayed for death, Lestat in the other room began to play the
spinet. I slammed it shut, barely missing his ngers. ‘You won’t
play while he dies!’ I said. ‘The hell I won’t!’ he answered me. ‘I’ll
play the drum if I like!’ And taking a great sterling silver platter
from a sideboard he slipped a nger through one of its handles
and beat it with a spoon.
“I told him to stop it, or I would make him stop it. And then we
both ceased our noise because the old man was calling his name.
He was saying that he must talk to Lestat now before he died. I
told Lestat to go to him. The sound of his crying was terrible.
‘Why should I? I’ve cared for him all these years. Isn’t that
enough?’ And he drew from his pocket a nail le, and, seating
himself on the foot of the old man’s bed, he began to le his long
nails.
“Meantime, I should tell you that I was aware of slaves about
the house. They were watching and listening. I was truly hoping
the old man would die within minutes. Once or twice before I’d
dealt with suspicion or doubt on the part of several slaves, but
never such a number. I immediately rang for Daniel, the slave to
whom I’d given the overseer’s house and position. But while I
waited for him, I could hear the old man talking to Lestat; Lestat,
who sat with his legs crossed, ling and ling, one eyebrow
arched, his attention on his perfect nails. ‘It was the school,’ the
old man was saying. ‘Oh, I know you remember…what can I say
to you…’ he moaned.
“ ‘You’d better say it,’ Lestat said, ‘because you’re about to die.’
The old man let out a terrible noise, and I suspect I made some
sound of my own. I positively loathed Lestat. I had a mind now to
get him out of the room. ‘Well, you know that, don’t you? Even a
fool like you knows that,’ said Lestat.
“ ‘You’ll never forgive me, will you? Not now, not even after
I’m dead,’ said the old man.
“ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ said Lestat.
“My patience was becoming exhausted with him, and the old
man was becoming more and more agitated. He was begging
Lestat to listen to him with a warm heart. The whole thing was
making me shudder. Meantime, Daniel had come, and I knew the
moment I saw him that everything at Pointe du Lac was lost. Had
I been more attentive I’d have seen signs of it before now. He
looked at me with eyes of glass. I was a monster to him.
‘Monsieur Lestat’s father is very ill. Going,’ I said, ignoring his
expression. ‘I want no noise tonight; the slaves must all stay
within the cabins. A doctor is on his way.’ He stared at me as if I
were lying. And then his eyes moved curiously and coldly away
from me towards the old man’s door. His face underwent such a
change that I rose at once and looked in the room. It was Lestat,
slouched at the foot of the bed, his back to the bedpost, his nail
le working furiously, grimacing in such a way that both his great
teeth showed prominently.”
The vampire stopped, his shoulders shaking with silent
laughter. He was looking at the boy. And the boy looked shyly at
the table. But he had already looked, and xedly, at the vampire’s
mouth. He had seen that the lips were of a dierent texture from
the vampire’s skin, that they were silken and delicately lined like
any person’s lips, only deadly white; and he had glimpsed the
white teeth. Only, the vampire had such a way of smiling that
they were not completely revealed; and the boy had not even
thought of such teeth until now. “You can imagine,” said the
vampire, “what this meant.
“I had to kill him.”
“You what?” said the boy.
“I had to kill him. He started to run. He would have alarmed
everyone. Perhaps it might have been handled some other way,
but I had no time. So I went after him, overpowering him. But
then, nding myself in the act of doing what I had not done for
four years, I stopped. This was a man. He had his bone-handle
knife in his hand to defend himself. And I took it from him easily
and slipped it into his heart. He sank to his knees at once, his
ngers tightening on the blade, bleeding on it. And the sight of
the blood, the aroma of it, maddened me. I believe I moaned
aloud. But I did not reach for him, I would not. Then I remember
seeing Lestat’s gure emerge in the mirror over the sideboard.
‘Why did you do this!’ he demanded. I turned to face him,
determined he would not see me in this weakened state. The old
man was delirious, he went on, he could not understand what the
old man was saying. ‘The slaves, they know…you must go to the
cabins and keep watch,’ I managed to say to him. ‘I’ll care for the
old man.’
“ ‘Kill him,’ Lestat said.
“ ‘Are you mad!’ I answered. ‘He’s your father!’
“ ‘I know he’s my father!’ said Lestat. ‘That’s why you have to
kill him. I can’t kill him! If I could, I would have done it a long
time ago, damn him!’ He wrung his hands. ‘We’ve got to get out
of here. And look what you’ve done killing this one. There’s no
time to lose. His wife will be wailing up here in minutes…or she’ll
send someone worse!’ ”
The vampire sighed. “This was all true. Lestat was right. I could
hear the slaves gathering around Daniel’s cottage, waiting for
him. Daniel had been brave enough to come into the haunted
house alone. When he didn’t return, the slaves would panic,
become a mob. I told Lestat to calm them, to use all his power as
a white master over them and not to alarm them with horror, and
then I went into the bedroom and shut the door. I had then
another shock in a night of shocks. Because I’d never seen Lestat’s
father as he was then.
“He was sitting up now, leaning forward, talking to Lestat,
begging Lestat to answer him, telling him he understood his
bitterness better than Lestat did himself. And he was a living
corpse. Nothing animated his sunken body but a erce will:
hence, his eyes for their gleam were all the more sunken in his
skull, and his lips in their trembling made his old yellowed mouth
more horrible. I sat at the foot of the bed, and, suering to see
him so, I gave him my hand. I cannot tell you how much his
appearance had shaken me. For when I bring death, it is swift and
consciousless, leaving the victim as if in enchanted sleep. But this
was the slow decay, the body refusing to surrender to the vampire
of time which had sucked upon it for years on end. ‘Lestat,’ he
said. ‘Just for once, don’t be hard with me. Just for once, be for
me the boy you were. My son.’ He said this over and over, the
words, ‘My son, my son’; and then he said something I could not
hear about innocence and innocence destroyed. But I could see
that he was not out of his mind, as Lestat thought, but in some
terrible state of lucidity. The burden of the past was on him with
full force; and the present, which was only death, which he fought
with all his will, could do nothing to soften that burden. But I
knew I might deceive him if I used all my skill, and, bending close
to him now, I whispered the word, ‘Father.’ It was not Lestat’s
voice, it was mine, a soft whisper. But he calmed at once and I
thought then he might die. But he held my hand as if he were
being pulled under by dark ocean waves and I alone could save
him. He talked now of some country teacher, a name garbled,
who found in Lestat a brilliant pupil and begged to take him to a
monastery for an education. He cursed himself for bringing Lestat
home, for burning his books. ‘You must forgive me, Lestat,’ he
cried.
“I pressed his hand tightly, hoping this might do for some
answer, but he repeated this again. ‘You have it all to live for, but
you are as cold and brutal as I was then with the work always
there and the cold and hunger! Lestat, you must remember. You
were the gentlest of them all! God will forgive me if you forgive
me.’
“Well, at that moment, the real Esau came through the door. I
gestured for quiet, but he wouldn’t see that. So I had to get up
quickly so the father wouldn’t hear his voice from a distance. The
slaves had run from him. ‘But they’re out there, they’re gathered
in the dark. I hear them,’ said Lestat. And then he glared at the
old man. ‘Kill him, Louis!’ he said to me, his voice touched with
the rst pleading I’d ever heard in it. Then he bit down in rage.
‘Do it!’
‘Lean over that pillow and tell him you forgive him all, forgive
him for taking you out of school when you were a boy! Tell him
that now.’
“ ‘For what!’ Lestat grimaced, so that his face looked like a
skull. ‘Taking me out of school!’ He threw up his hands and let
out a terrible roar of desperation. ‘Damn him! Kill him!’ he said.
“ ‘No!’ I said. ‘You forgive him. Or you kill him yourself. Go on.
Kill your own father.’
“The old man begged to be told what we were saying. He called
out, ‘Son, son,’ and Lestat danced like the maddened
Rumpelstiltskin about to put his foot through the oor. I went to
the lace curtains. I could see and hear the slaves surrounding the
house of Pointe du Lac, forms woven in the shadows, drawing
near. ‘You were Joseph among your brothers,’ the old man said.
‘The best of them, but how was I to know? It was when you were
gone I knew, when all those years passed and they could oer me
no comfort, no solace. And then you came back to me and took
me from the farm, but it wasn’t you. It wasn’t the same boy.’
“I turned on Lestat now and veritably dragged him towards the
bed. Never had I seen him so weak, and at the same time enraged.
He shook me o and then knelt down near the pillow, glowering
at me. I stood resolute, and whispered, ‘Forgive!’
“ ‘It’s all right, Father. You must rest easy. I hold nothing
against you,’ he said, his voice thin and strained over his anger.
“The old man turned on the pillow, murmuring something soft
with relief, but Lestat was already gone. He stopped short in the
doorway, his hands over his ears. ‘They’re coming!’ he whispered;
and then, turning just so he could see me, he said, ‘Take him. For
God’s sake!’
“The old man never even knew what happened. He never
awoke from his stupor. I bled him just enough, opening the gash
so he would then die without feeding my dark passion. That
thought I couldn’t bear. I knew now it wouldn’t matter if the body
was found in this manner, because I had had enough of Pointe du
Lac and Lestat and all this identity of Pointe du Lac’s prosperous
master. I would torch the house, and turn to the wealth I’d held
under many names, safe for just such a moment.
“Meantime, Lestat was after the slaves. He would leave such
ruin and death behind him no one could make a story of that
night at Pointe du Lac, and I went with him. Always before, his
ferocity was mysterious, but now I bared my fangs on the humans
who ed from me, my steady advance overcoming their clumsy,
pathetic speed as the veil of death descended, or the veil of
madness. The power and the proof of the vampire was
incontestable, so that the slaves scattered in all directions. And it
was I who ran back up the steps to put the torch to Pointe du Lac.
“Lestat came bounding after me. ‘What are you doing!’ he
shouted. ‘Are you mad!’ But there was no way to put out the
ames. ‘They’re gone and you’re destroying it, all of it.’ He turned
round and round in the magnicent parlor, amid his fragile
splendor. ‘Get your con out. You have three hours till dawn!’ I
said. The house was a funeral pyre.”
“Could the re have hurt you?” asked the boy.
“Most denitely!” said the vampire.
“Did you go back to the oratory? Was it safe?”
“No. Not at all. Some fty-ve slaves were scattered around the
grounds. Many of them would not have desired the life of a
runaway and would most certainly go right to Freniere or south to
the Bel Jardin plantation down river. I had no intention of staying
there that night. But there was little time to go anywhere else.”
“The woman, Babette!” said the boy.
The vampire smiled. “Yes, I went to Babette. She lived now at
Freniere with her young husband. I had enough time to load my
con into the carriage and go to her.”
“But what about Lestat?”
The vampire sighed. “Lestat went with me. It was his intention
to go on to New Orleans, and he was trying to persuade me to do
just that. But when he saw I meant to hide at Freniere, he opted
for that also. We might not have ever made it to New Orleans. It
was growing light. Not so that mortal eyes would have seen it, but
Lestat and I could see it.
“Now, as for Babette, I had visited her once again. As I told
you, she had scandalized the coast by remaining alone on the
plantation without a man in the house, without even an older
woman. Babette’s greatest problem was that she might succeed
nancially only to suer the isolation of social ostracism. She had
such a sensibility that wealth itself meant nothing to her; family, a
line…this meant something to Babette. Though she was able to
hold the plantation together, the scandal was wearing on her. She
was giving up inside. I came to her one night in the garden. Not
permitting her to look on me, I told her in a most gentle voice
that I was the same person she’d seen before. That I knew of her
life and her suering. ‘Don’t expect people to understand it,’ I told
her. ‘They are fools. They want you to retire because of your
brother’s death. They would use your life as if it were merely oil
for a proper lamp. You must defy them, but you must defy them
with purity and condence.’ She was listening all the while in
silence. I told her she was to give a ball for a cause. And the cause
to be religious. She might pick a convent in New Orleans, any
one, and plan for a philanthropic ball. She would invite her
deceased mother’s dearest friends to be chaperones and she would
do all of this with perfect condence. Above all, perfect
condence. It was condence and purity which were all-
important.
“Well, Babette thought this to be a stroke of genius. ‘I don’t
know what you are, and you will not tell me,’ she said. (This was
true, I would not.) ‘But I can only think that you are an angel.’
And she begged to see my face. That is, she begged in the manner
of such people as Babette, who are not given to truly begging
anyone for anything. Not that Babette was proud. She was simply
strong and honest, which in most cases makes begging…I see you
want to ask me a question.” The vampire stopped.
“Oh, no,” said the boy, who had meant to hide it.
“But you mustn’t be afraid to ask me anything. If I held
something too close…” And when the vampire said this his face
darkened for an instant. He frowned, and as his brows drew
together a small well appeared in the esh of his forehead over
his left brow, as though someone had pressed it with a nger. It
gave him a peculiar look of deep distress. “If I held something too
close for you to ask about it, I would not bring it up in the rst
place,” he said.
The boy found himself staring at the vampire’s eyes, at the
eyelashes which were like ne black wires in the tender esh of
the lids.
“Ask me,” he said to the boy.
“Babette, the way you speak of her,” said the boy. “As if your
feeling was special.”
“Did I give you the impression I could not feel?” asked the
vampire.
“No, not at all. Obviously you felt for the old man. You stayed
to comfort him when you were in danger. And what you felt for
young Freniere when Lestat wanted to kill him…all this you
explained. But I was wondering…did you have a special feeling
for Babette? Was it feeling for Babette all along that caused you to
protect Freniere?”
“You mean love,” said the vampire. “Why do you hesitate to say
it?”
“Because you spoke of detachment,” said the boy.
“Do you think that angels are detached?” asked the vampire.
The boy thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said.
“But aren’t angels capable of love?” asked the vampire. “Don’t
angels gaze upon the face of God with complete love?”
The boy thought for a moment. “Love or adoration,” he said.
“What is the dierence?” asked the vampire thoughtfully.
“What is the dierence?” It was clearly not a riddle for the boy.
He was asking himself. “Angels feel love, and pride…the pride of
The Fall…and hatred. The strong overpowering emotions of
detached persons in whom emotion and will are one,” he said
nally. He stared at the table now, as though he were thinking
this over, were not entirely satised with it. “I had for Babette…a
strong feeling. It was not the strongest I’ve ever known for a
human being.” He looked up at the boy. “But it was very strong.
Babette was to me in her own way an ideal human being….”
He shifted in his chair, the cape moving softly about him, and
turned his face to the windows. The boy bent forward and
checked the tape. Then he took another cassette from his briefcase
and, begging the vampire’s pardon, tted it into place. “I’m afraid
I did ask something too personal. I didn’t mean…” he said
anxiously to the vampire.
“You asked nothing of the sort,” said the vampire, looking at
him suddenly. “It is a question right to the point. I feel love, and I
felt some measure of love for Babette, though not the greatest
love I’ve ever felt. It was foreshadowed in Babette.
“To return to my story, Babette’s charity ball was a success and
her re-entry in social life assured by it. Her money generously
underwrote any doubts in the minds of her suitors’ families, and
she married. On summer nights, I used to visit her, never letting
her see me or know that I was there. I came to see that she was
happy, and seeing her happy I felt a happiness as the result.
“And to Babette I came now with Lestat. He would have killed
the Frenieres long ago if I hadn’t stopped him, and he thought
now that was what I meant to do. ‘And what peace would that
bring?’ I asked. ‘You call me the idiot, and you’ve been the idiot
all along. Do you think I don’t know why you made me a
vampire? You couldn’t live by yourself, you couldn’t manage even
the simplest things. For years now, I’ve managed everything while
you sat about making a pretense of superiority. There’s nothing
left for you to tell me about life. I have no need of you and no use
for you. It’s you who need me, and if you touch but one of the
Freniere slaves, I’ll get rid of you. It will be a battle between us,
and I needn’t point out to you I have more wit to fare better in my
little nger than you in your entire frame. Do as I say.’
“Well, this startled him, though it shouldn’t have; and he
protested he had much to tell me, of things and types of people I
might kill who would cause sudden death and places in the world
I must never go and so forth and so on, nonsense that I could
hardly endure. But I had no time for him. The overseer’s lights
were lit at Freniere; he was trying to quell the excitement of the
runaway slaves and his own. And the re of Pointe du Lac could
be seen still against the sky. Babette was dressed and attending to
business, having sent carriages to Pointe du Lac and slaves to help
ght the blaze. The frightened runaways were kept away from the
others, and at that point no one regarded their stories as any more
than slave foolishness. Babette knew something dreadful had
happened and suspected murder, never the supernatural. She was
in the study making a note of the re in the plantation diary when
I found her. It was almost morning. I had only a few minutes to
convince her she must help. I spoke to her at rst, refusing to let
her turn around, and calmly she listened. I told her I must have a
room for the night, to rest. ‘I’ve never brought you harm. I ask
you now for a key, and your promise that no one will try to enter
that room until tonight. Then I’ll tell you all.’ I was nearly
desperate now. The sky was paling. Lestat was yards o in the
orchard with the cons. ‘But why have you come to me tonight?’
she asked. ‘And why not to you?’ I replied. ‘Did I not help you at
the very moment when you most needed guidance, when you
alone stood strong among those who are dependent and weak?
Did I not twice oer you good counsel? And haven’t I watched
over your happiness ever since?’ I could see the gure of Lestat at
the window. He was in a panic. ‘Give me the key to a room. Let
no one come near it till nightfall. I swear to you I would never
bring you harm.’ ‘And if I don’t…if I believe you come from the
devil!’ she said now, and meant to turn her head. I reached for the
candle and put it out. She saw me standing with my back to the
graying windows. ‘If you don’t, and if you believe me to be the
devil, I shall die.’ I said. ‘Give me the key. I could kill you now if I
chose, do you see?’ And now I moved close to her and showed
myself to her more completely, so that she gasped and drew back,
holding to the arm of her chair. ‘But I would not. I would die
rather than kill you. I will die if you don’t give me such a key as I
ask.’
“It was accomplished. What she thought, I don’t know. But she
gave me one of the ground-oor storage rooms where wine was
aged, and I am sure she saw Lestat and me bringing the cons. I
not only locked the door but barricaded it.
“Lestat was up the next evening when I awoke.”
“Then she kept her word.”
“Yes. Only she had gone a step further. She had not only
respected our locked door; she had locked it again from without.”
“And the stories of the slaves…she’d heard them.”
“Yes, she had. Lestat was the rst to discover we were locked
in, however. He became furious. He had planned to get to New
Orleans as fast as possible. He was now completely suspicious of
me. ‘I only needed you as long as my father lived,’ he said,
desperately trying to nd some opening somewhere. The place
was a dungeon.
“ ‘Now I won’t put up with anything from you, I warn you.’ He
didn’t even wish to turn his back on me. I sat there straining to
hear voices in the rooms above, wishing that he would shut up,
not wishing to conde for a moment my feeling for Babette or my
hopes.
“I was also thinking something else. You ask me about feeling
and detachment. One of its aspects—detachment with feeling, I
should say—is that you can think of two things at the same time.
You can think that you are not safe and may die, and you can
think of something very abstract and remote. And this was
denitely so with me. I was thinking at that moment, wordlessly
and rather deeply, how sublime friendship between Lestat and me
might have been; how few impediments to it there would have
been, and how much to be shared. Perhaps it was the closeness of
Babette which caused me to feel it, for how could I truly ever
come to know Babette, except, of course, through the one nal
way; to take her life, to become one with her in an embrace of
death when my soul would become one with her heart and
nourished with it. But my soul wanted to know Babette without
my need to kill, without robbing her of every breath of life, every
drop of blood. But Lestat, how we might have known each other,
had he been a man of character, a man of even a little thought.
The old man’s words came back to me; Lestat a brilliant pupil, a
lover of books that had been burned. I knew only the Lestat who
sneered at my library, called it a pile of dust, ridiculed relentlessly
my reading, my meditations.
“I became aware now that the house over our heads was
quieting. Now and then feet moved and the boards creaked and
the light in the cracks of the boards gave a faint, uneven
illumination. I could see Lestat feeling along the brick walls, his
hard enduring vampire face a twisted mask of human frustration.
I was condent we must part ways at once, that I must if
necessary put an ocean between us. And I realized that I’d
tolerated him this long because of self-doubt. I’d fooled myself
into believing I stayed for the old man, and for my sister and her
husband. But I stayed with Lestat because I was afraid he did
know essential secrets as a vampire which I could not discover
alone and, more important, because he was the only one of my
kind whom I knew. He had never told me how he had become a
vampire or where I might nd a single other member of our kind.
This troubled me greatly then, as much as it had for four years. I
hated him and wanted to leave him; yet could I leave him?
“Meantime, as all this passed through my thoughts, Lestat
continued his diatribe: he didn’t need me; he wasn’t going to put
up with anything, especially not any threat from the Frenieres.
We had to be ready when that door opened. ‘Remember!’ he said
to me nally. ‘Speed and strength; they cannot match us in that.
And fear. Remember always, to strike fear. Don’t be sentimental
now! You’ll cost us everything.’
“ ‘You wish to be on your own after this?’ I asked him. I wanted
him to say it. I did not have the courage. Or, rather, I did not
know my own feelings.
“ ‘I want to get to New Orleans!’ he said. ‘I was simply warning
you I don’t need you. But to get out of here we need each other.
You don’t begin to know how to use your powers! You have no
innate sense of what you are! Use your persuasive powers with
this woman if she comes. But if she comes with others, then be
prepared to act like what you are.’
“ ‘Which is what?’ I asked him, because it had never seemed
such a mystery to me as it did at that time. ‘What am I?’ He was
openly disgusted. He threw up his hands.
“ ‘Be prepared…’ he said, now baring his magnicent teeth, ‘to
kill!’ He looked suddenly at the boards overhead. ‘They’re going
to bed up there, do you hear them?’ After a long silent time
during which Lestat paced and I sat there musing, plumbing my
mind for what I might do or say to Babette or, deeper still, for the
answer to a harder question—what did I feel for Babette?—after a
long time, a light ared beneath the door. Lestat was poised to
jump whoever should open it. It was Babette alone and she
entered with a lamp, not seeing Lestat, who stood behind her, but
looking directly at me.
“I had never seen her as she looked then; her hair was down for
bed, a mass of dark waves behind her white dressing gown; and
her face was tight with worry and fear. This gave it a feverish
radiance and made her large brown eyes all the more huge. As I
have told you, I loved her strength and honesty, the greatness of
her soul. And I did not feel passion for her as you would feel it.
But I found her more alluring than any woman I’d known in
mortal life. Even in the severe dressing gown, her arms and
breasts were round and soft; and she seemed to me an intriguing
soul clothed in rich, mysterious esh. I who am hard and spare
and dedicated to a purpose, felt drawn to her irresistibly; and,
knowing it could only culminate in death, I turned away from her
at once, wondering if when she gazed into my eyes she found
them dead and soulless.
“ ‘You are the one who came to me before,’ she said now, as if
she hadn’t been sure. ‘And you are the owner of Pointe du Lac.
You are!’ I knew as she spoke that she must have heard the
wildest stories of last night, and there would be no convincing her
of any lie. I had used my unnatural appearance twice to reach
her, to speak to her; I could not hide it or minimize it now.
“ ‘I mean you no harm,’ I said to her. ‘I need only a carriage and
horses…the horses I left last night in the pasture.’ She didn’t seem
to hear my words; she drew closer, determined to catch me in the
circle of her light.
“And then I saw Lestat behind her, his shadow merging with
her shadow on the brick wall; he was anxious and dangerous.
‘You will give me the carriage?’ I insisted. She was looking at me
now, the lamp raised; and just when I meant to look away, I saw
her face change. It went still, blank, as if her soul were losing its
consciousness. She closed her eyes and shook her head. It
occurred to me that I had somehow caused her to go into a trance
without any eort on my part. ‘What are you!’ she whispered.
‘You’re from the devil. You were from the devil when you came to
me!’
“ ‘The devil!’ I answered her. This distressed me more than I
thought I could be distressed. If she believed this, then she would
think my counsel bad; she would question herself. Her life was
rich and good, and I knew she mustn’t do this. Like all strong
people, she suered always a measure of loneliness; she was a
marginal outsider, a secret indel of a certain sort. And the
balance by which she lived might be upset if she were to question
her own goodness. She stared at me with undisguised horror. It
was as if in horror she forgot her own vulnerable position. And
now Lestat, who was drawn to weakness like a parched man to
water, grabbed her wrist, and she screamed and dropped the
lamp. The ames leaped in the splattered oil, and Lestat pulled
her backwards towards the open door. ‘You get the carriage!’ he
said to her. ‘Get it now, and the horses. You are in mortal danger;
don’t talk of devils!’
“I stomped on the ames and went for Lestat, shouting at him
to leave her. He held her by both wrists, and she was furious.
‘You’ll rouse the house if you don’t shut up!’ he said to me. ‘And
I’ll kill her! Get the carriage…lead us. Talk to the stable boy!’ he
said to her, pushing her into the open air.
“We moved slowly across the dark court, my distress almost
unbearable, Lestat ahead of me; and before us both Babette, who
moved backwards, her eyes peering at us in the dark. Suddenly
she stopped. One dim light burned in the house above. ‘I’ll get
you nothing!’ she said. I reached for Lestat’s arm and told him I
must handle this. ‘She’ll reveal us to everyone unless you let me
talk to her,’ I whispered to him.
“ ‘Then get yourself in check,’ he said disgustedly. ‘Be strong.
Don’t quibble with her.’
“ ‘You go as I talk…go to the stables and get the carriage and
the horses. But don’t kill!’ Whether he’d obey me or not I didn’t
know, but he darted away just as I stepped up to Babette. Her face
was a mixture of fury and resolution. She said, ‘Get thee behind me,
Satan.’ And I stood there before her then, speechless, just holding
her in my glance as surely as she held me. If she could hear Lestat
in the night she gave no indication. Her hatred for me burned me
like re.
“ ‘Why do you say this to me?’ I asked. ‘Was the counsel I gave
you bad? Did I do you harm? I came to help you, to give you
strength. I thought only of you, when I had no need to think of
you at all.’
“She shook her head. ‘But why, why do you talk to me like
this?’ she asked. ‘I know what you’ve done at Pointe du Lac;
you’ve lived there like a devil! The slaves are wild with stories!
All day men have been on the river road on the way to Pointe du
Lac; my husband was there! He saw the house in ruins, the bodies
of slaves throughout the orchards, the elds. What are you! Why
do you speak to me gently! What do you want of me?’ She clung
now to the pillars of the porch and was backing slowly to the
staircase. Something moved above in the lighted window.
“ ‘I cannot give you such answers now,’ I said to her. ‘Believe
me when I tell you I came to you only to do you good. And would
not have brought worry and care to you last night for anything,
had I the choice!’ ”
The vampire stopped.
The boy sat forward, his eyes wide. The vampire was frozen,
staring o, lost in his thoughts, his memory. And the boy looked
down suddenly, as if this were the respectful thing to do. He
glanced again at the vampire and then away, his own face as
distressed as the vampire’s; and then he started to say something,
but he stopped.
The vampire turned towards him and studied him, so that the
boy ushed and looked away again anxiously. But then he raised
his eyes and looked into the vampire’s eyes. He swallowed, but he
held the vampire’s gaze.
“Is this what you want?” the vampire whispered. “Is this what
you wanted to hear?”
He moved the chair back soundlessly and walked to the
window. The boy sat as if stunned looking at his broad shoulders
and the long mass of the cape. The vampire turned his head
slightly. “You don’t answer me. I’m not giving you what you
want, am I? You wanted an interview. Something to broadcast on
the radio.”
“That doesn’t matter. I’ll throw the tapes away if you want!”
The boy rose. “I can’t say I understand all you’re telling me. You’d
know I was lying if I said I did. So how can I ask you to go on,
except to say what I do understand…what I do understand is like
nothing I’ve ever understood before.” He took a step towards the
vampire. The vampire appeared to be looking down into
Divisadero Street. Then he turned his head slowly and looked at
the boy and smiled. His face was serene and almost aectionate.
And the boy suddenly felt uncomfortable. He shoved his hands
into his pockets and turned towards the table. Then he looked at
the vampire tentatively and said, “Will you…please go on?”
The vampire turned with folded arms and leaned against the
window. “Why?” he asked.
The boy was at a loss. “Because I want to hear it.” He shrugged.
“Because I want to know what happened.”
“All right,” said the vampire, with the same smile playing on
his lips. And he went back to the chair and sat opposite the boy
and turned the recorder just a little and said, “Marvellous
contraption, really…so let me go on.
“You must understand that what I felt for Babette now was a
desire for communication, stronger than any other desire I then
felt…except for the physical desire for…blood. It was so strong in
me, this desire, that it made me feel the depth of my capacity for
loneliness. When I’d spoken to her before, there had been a brief
but direct communication which was as simple and as satisfying
as taking a person’s hand. Clasping it. Letting it go gently. All this
in a moment of great need and distress. But now we were at odds.
To Babette, I was a monster; and I found it horrible to myself and
would have done anything to overcome her feeling. I told her the
counsel I’d given her was right, that no instrument of the devil
could do right even if he chose.
“ ‘I know!’ she answered me. But by this she meant that she
could no more trust me than the devil himself. I approached her
and she moved back. I raised my hand and she shrank, clutching
for the railing. ‘All right, then,’ I said, feeling a terrible
exasperation. ‘Why did you protect me last night! Why have you
come to me alone!’ What I saw in her face was cunning. She had a
reason, but she would by no means reveal it to me. It was
impossible for her to speak to me freely, openly, to give me the
communication I desired. I felt weary looking at her. The night
was already late, and I could see and hear that Lestat had stolen
into the wine cellar and taken our caskets, and I had a need to get
away; and other needs besides…the need to kill and drink. But it
wasn’t that which made me weary. It was something else,
something far worse. It was as if this night were only one of
thousands of nights, world without end, night curving into night
to make a great arching line of which I couldn’t see the end, a
night in which I roamed alone under cold, mindless stars. I think I
turned away from her and put my hand to my eyes. I felt
oppressed and weak suddenly. I think I was making some sound
without my will. And then on this vast and desolate landscape of
night, where I was standing alone and where Babette was only an
illusion, I saw suddenly a possibility that I’d never considered
before, a possibility from which I’d ed, rapt as I was with the
world, fallen into the senses of the vampire, in love with color
and shape and sound and singing and softness and innite
variation. Babette was moving, but I took no note of it. She was
taking something from her pocket; her great ring of household
keys jingled there. She was moving up the steps. Let her go away,
I was thinking. ‘Creature of the devil!’ I whispered. ‘Get thee
behind me, Satan,’ I repeated. I turned to look at her now. She
was frozen on the steps, with wide suspicious eyes. She’d reached
the lantern which hung on the wall, and she held it in her hands
just staring at me, holding it tight, like a valuable purse. ‘You
think I come from the devil?’ I asked her.
“She quickly moved her left ngers around the hook of the
lantern and with her right hand made the Sign of the Cross, the
Latin words barely audible to me; and her face blanched and her
eyebrows rose when there was absolutely no change because of it.
‘Did you expect me to go up in a pu of smoke?’ I asked her. I
drew closer now, for I had gained detachment from her by virtue
of my thoughts. ‘And where would I go?’ I asked her. ‘And where
would I go, to hell, from whence I came? To the devil, from
whom I came?’ I stood at the foot of the steps. ‘Suppose I told you
I know nothing of the devil. Suppose I told you that I do not even
know if he exists!’ It was the devil I’d seen upon the landscape of
my thoughts; it was the devil about whom I thought now. I turned
away from her. She wasn’t hearing me as you are now. She wasn’t
listening. I looked up at the stars. Lestat was ready, I knew it. It
was as if he’d been ready there with the carriage for years; and
she had stood upon the step for years. I had the sudden sensation
my brother was there and had been there for ages also, and that
he was talking to me low in an excited voice, and what he was
saying was desperately important but it was going away from me
as fast as he said it, like the rustle of rats in the rafters of an
immense house. There was a scraping sound and a burst of light.
‘I don’t know whether I come from the devil or not! I don’t know
what I am!’ I shouted at Babette, my voice deafening in my own
sensitive ears. ‘I am to live to the end of the world, and I do not
even know what I am!’ But the light ared before me; it was the
lantern which she had lit with a match and held now so I couldn’t
see her face. For a moment I could see nothing but the light, and
then the great weight of the lantern struck me full force in the
chest and the glass shattered on the bricks and the ames roared
on my legs, in my face. Lestat was shouting from the darkness,
‘Put it out, put it out, idiot. It will consume you!’ And I felt
something thrashing me wildly in my blindness. It was Lestat’s
jacket. I’d fallen helpless back against the pillar, helpless as much
from the re and the blow as from the knowledge that Babette
meant to destroy me, as from the knowledge that I did not know
what I was.
“All this happened in a matter of seconds. The re was out and
I knelt in the dark with my hands on the bricks. Lestat at the top
of the stairs had Babette again, and I ew up after him, grabbing
him about the neck and pulling him backwards. He turned on me,
enraged, and kicked me; but I clung to him and pulled him down
on top of me to the bottom. Babette was petried. I saw her dark
outline against the sky and the glint of light in her eyes. ‘Come on
then!’ Lestat said, scrambling to his feet. Babette was putting her
hand to her throat. My injured eyes strained to gather the light to
see her. Her throat bled. ‘Remember!’ I said to her. ‘I might have
killed you! Or let him kill you! I did not. You called me devil. You
are wrong.’ ”
“Then you’d stopped Lestat just in time,” said the boy.
“Yes. Lestat could kill and drink like a bolt of lightning. But I
had saved only Babette’s physical life. I was not to know that until
later.”
“In an hour and a half Lestat and I were in New Orleans, the
horses nearly dead from exhaustion, the carriage parked on a side
street a block from a new Spanish hotel. Lestat had an old man by
the arm and was putting fty dollars into his hand. ‘Get us a
suite,’ he directed him, ‘and order some champagne. Say it is for
two gentlemen, and pay in advance. And when you come back I’ll
have another fty for you. And I’ll be watching for you, I wager.’
His gleaming eyes held the man in thrall. I knew he’d kill him as
soon as he returned with the hotel room keys, and he did. I sat in
the carriage watching wearily as the man grew weaker and
weaker and nally died, his body collapsing like a sack of rocks in
a doorway as Lestat let him go. ‘Good night, sweet prince,’ said
Lestat ‘and here’s your fty dollars.’ And he shoved the money
into his pocket as if it were a capital joke.
“Now we slipped in the courtyard doors of the hotel and went
up to the lavish parlor of our suite. Champagne glistened in a
frosted bucket. Two glasses stood on the silver tray. I knew Lestat
would ll one glass and sit there staring at the pale yellow color.
And I, a man in a trance, lay on the settee staring at him as if
nothing he could do mattered. I have to leave him or die, I
thought. It would be sweet to die, I thought. Yes, die. I wanted to
die before. Now I wish to die. I saw it with such sweet clarity,
such dead calm.
“ ‘You’re being morbid!’ Lestat said suddenly. ‘It’s almost dawn.’
He pulled the lace curtains back, and I could see the rooftops
under the dark blue sky, and above, the great constellation Orion.
‘Go kill!’ said Lestat, sliding up the glass. He stepped out of the
sill, and I heard his feet land softly on the rooftop beside the
hotel. He was going for the cons, or at least one. My thirst rose
in me like fever, and I followed him. My desire to die was
constant, like a pure thought in the mind, devoid of emotion. Yet
I needed to feed. I’ve indicated to you I would not then kill
people. I moved along the rooftop in search of rats.”
“But why…you’ve said Lestat shouldn’t have made you start
with people. Did you mean…do you mean for you it was an
aesthetic choice, not a moral one?”
“Had you asked me then, I would have told you it was
aesthetic, that I wished to understand death in stages. That the
death of an animal yielded such pleasure and experience to me
that I had only begun to understand it, and wished to save the
experience of human death for my mature understanding. But it
was moral. Because all aesthetic decisions are moral, really.”
“I don’t understand,” said the boy. “I thought aesthetic
decisions could be completely immoral. What about the cliché of
the artist who leaves his wife and children so he can paint? Or
Nero playing the harp while Rome burned?”
“Both were moral decisions. Both served a higher good, in the
mind of the artist. The conict lies between the morals of the
artist and the morals of society, not between aesthetics and
morality. But often this isn’t understood; and here comes the
waste, the tragedy. An artist, stealing paints from a store, for
example, imagines himself to have made an inevitable but
immoral decision, and then he sees himself as fallen from grace;
what follows is despair and petty irresponsibility, as if morality
were a great glass world which can be utterly shattered by one
act. But this was not my great concern then. I did not know these
things then. I believed I killed animals for aesthetic reasons only,
and I hedged against the great moral question of whether or not
by my very nature I was damned.
“Because, you see, though Lestat had never said anything about
devils or hell to me, I believed I was damned when I went over to
him, just as Judas must have believed it when he put the noose
around his neck. You understand?”
The boy said nothing. He started to speak but didn’t. The color
burned for a moment in blotches on his cheeks. “Were you?” he
whispered.
The vampire only sat there, smiling, a small smile that played
on his lips like the light. The boy was staring at him now as if he
were just seeing him for the rst time.
“Perhaps…” said the vampire drawing himself up and crossing
his legs “…we should take things one at a time. Perhaps I should
go on with my story.”
“Yes, please…” said the boy.
“I was agitated that night, as I told you. I had hedged against
this question as a vampire and now it completely overwhelmed
me, and in that state I had no desire to live. Well, this produced in
me, as it can in humans, a craving for that which will satisfy at
least physical desire. I think I used it as an excuse. I have told you
what the kill means to vampires; you can imagine from what I’ve
said the dierence between a rat and a man.
“I went down into the street after Lestat and walked for blocks.
The streets were muddy then, the actual blocks islands above the
gutters, and the entire city so dark compared to the cities of
today. The lights were as beacons in a black sea. Even with
morning rising slowly, only the dormers and high porches of the
houses were emerging from the dark, and to a mortal man the
narrow streets I found were like pitch. Am I damned? Am I from
the devil? Is my very nature that of a devil? I was asking myself
over and over. And if it is, why then do I revolt against it, tremble
when Babette hurls a aming lantern at me, turn away in disgust
when Lestat kills? What have I become in becoming a vampire?
Where am I to go? And all the while, as the death wish caused me
to neglect my thirst, my thirst grew hotter; my veins were
veritable threads of pain in my esh; my temples throbbed; and
nally I could stand it no longer. Torn apart by the wish to take
no action—to starve, to wither in thought on the one hand; and
driven to kill on the other—I stood in an empty, desolate street
and heard the sound of a child crying.
“She was within. I drew close to the walls, trying in my
habitual detachment only to understand the nature of her cry. She
was weary and aching and utterly alone. She had been crying for
so long now, that soon she would stop from sheer exhaustion. I
slipped my hand up under the heavy wooden shutter and pulled it
so the bolt slipped. There she sat in the dark room beside a dead
woman, a woman who’d been dead for some days. The room itself
was cluttered with trunks and packages as though a number of
people had been packing to leave; but the mother lay half clothed,
her body already in decay, and no one else was there but the
child. It was moments before she saw me, but when she did she
began to tell me that I must do something to help her mother. She
was only ve at most, and very thin, and her face was stained
with dirt and tears. She begged me to help. They had to take a
ship, she said, before the plague came; their father was waiting.
She began to shake her mother now and to cry in the most
pathetic and desperate way; and then she looked at me again and
burst into the greatest ow of tears.
“You must understand that by now I was burning with physical
need to drink. I could not have made it through another day
without feeding. But there were alternatives: rats abounded in the
streets, and somewhere very near a dog was howling hopelessly. I
might have ed the room had I chosen and fed and gotten back
easily. But the question pounded in me: Am I damned? If so, why
do I feel such pity for her, for her gaunt face? Why do I wish to
touch her tiny, soft arms, hold her now on my knee as I am doing,
feel her bend her head to my chest as I gently touch the satin
hair? Why do I do this? If I am damned I must want to kill her, I
must want to make her nothing but food for a cursed existence,
because being damned I must hate her.
“And when I thought of this, I saw Babette’s face contorted with
hatred when she had held the lantern waiting to light it, and I saw
Lestat in my mind and hated him, and I felt, yes, damned and this
is hell, and in that instant I had bent down and driven hard into
her soft, small neck and, hearing her tiny cry, whispered even as I
felt the hot blood on my lips, ‘It’s only for a moment and there’ll
be no more pain.’ But she was locked to me, and I was soon
incapable of saying anything. For four years I had not savored a
human; for four years I hadn’t really known; and now I heard her
heart in that terrible rhythm, and such a heart—not the heart of a
man or an animal, but the rapid, tenacious heart of the child,
beating harder and harder, refusing to die, beating like a tiny st
beating on a door, crying, ‘I will not die, I will not die, I cannot
die, I cannot die.…’ I think I rose to my feet still locked to her, the
heart pulling my heart faster with no hope of cease, the rich blood
rushing too fast for me, the room reeling, and then, despite
myself, I was staring over her bent head, her open mouth, down
through the gloom at the mother’s face; and through the half-mast
lids her eyes gleamed at me as if they were alive! I threw the
child down. She lay like a jointless doll. And turning in blind
horror of the mother to ee, I saw the window lled with a
familiar shape. It was Lestat, who backed away from it now
laughing, his body bent as he danced in the mud street. ‘Louis,
Louis,’ he taunted me, and pointed a long, bone-thin nger at me,
as if to say he’d caught me in the act. And now he bounded over
the sill, brushing me aside, and grabbed the mother’s stinking
body from the bed and made to dance with her.”
“Good God!” whispered the boy.
“Yes, I might have said the same,” said the vampire. “He
stumbled over the child as he pulled the mother along in
widening circles, singing as he danced, her matted hair falling in
her face, as her head snapped back and a black uid poured out
of her mouth. He threw her down. I was out of the window and
running down the street, and he was running after me. ‘Are you
afraid of me, Louis?’ he shouted. ‘Are you afraid? The child’s
alive, Louis, you left her breathing. Shall I go back and make her
a vampire? We could use her, Louis, and think of all the pretty
dresses we could buy for her. Louis, wait, Louis! I’ll go back for
her if you say!’ And so he ran after me all the way back to the
hotel, all the way across the rooftops, where I hoped to lose him,
until I leaped in the window of the parlor and turned in rage and
slammed the window shut. He hit it, arms outstretched, like a
bird who seeks to y through glass, and shook the frame. I was
utterly out of my mind. I went round and round the room looking
for some way to kill him. I pictured his body burned to a crisp on
the roof below. Reason had altogether left me, so that I was
consummate rage, and when he came through the broken glass,
we fought as we’d never fought before. It was hell that stopped
me, the thought of hell, of us being two souls in hell that grappled
in hatred. I lost my condence, my purpose, my grip. I was down
on the oor then, and he was standing over me, his eyes cold,
though his chest heaved. ‘You’re a fool, Louis,’ he said. His voice
was calm. It was so calm it brought me around. ‘The sun’s coming
up,’ he said, his chest heaving slightly from the struggle, his eyes
narrow as he looked at the window. I’d never seen him quite like
this. The ght had got the better of him in some way; or
something had. ‘Get in your con,’ he said to me, without even
the slightest anger. ‘But tomorrow night…we talk.’
“Well, I was more than slightly amazed. Lestat talk! I couldn’t
imagine this. Never had Lestat and I really talked. I think I have
described to you with accuracy our sparring matches, our angry
go-rounds.”
“He was desperate for the money, for your houses,” said the
boy. “Or was it that he was as afraid to be alone as you were?”
“These questions occurred to me. It even occurred to me that
Lestat meant to kill me, some way that I didn’t know. You see, I
wasn’t sure then why I awoke each evening when I did, whether it
was automatic when the deathlike sleep left me, and why it
happened sometimes earlier than at other times. It was one of the
things Lestat would not explain. And he was often up before me.
He was my superior in all the mechanics, as I’ve indicated. And I
shut the con that morning with a kind of despair.
“I should explain now, though, that the shutting of the con is
always disturbing. It is rather like going under a modern
anesthetic on an operating table. Even a casual mistake on the
part of an intruder might mean death.”
“But how could he have killed you? He couldn’t have exposed
you to the light; he couldn’t have stood it himself.”
“This is true, but rising before me he might have nailed my
con shut. Or set it are. The principal thing was, I didn’t know
what he might do, what he might know that I still did not know.
“But there was nothing to be done about it then, and with
thoughts of the dead woman and child still in my brain, and the
sun rising, I had no energy left to argue with him, and lay down
to miserable dreams.”
“You do dream!” said the boy.
“Often,” said the vampire. “I wish sometimes that I did not. For
such dreams, such long and clear dreams I never had as a mortal;
and such twisted nightmares I never had either. In my early days,
these dreams so absorbed me that often it seemed I fought waking
as long as I could and lay sometimes for hours thinking of these
dreams until the night was half gone; and dazed by them I often
wandered about seeking to understand their meaning. They were
in many ways as elusive as the dreams of mortals. I dreamed of
my brother, for instance, that he was near me in some state
between life and death, calling to me for help. And often I
dreamed of Babette; and often—almost always—there was a great
wasteland backdrop to my dreams, that wasteland of night I’d
seen when cursed by Babette as I’ve told you. It was as if all
gures walked and talked on the desolate home of my damned
soul. I don’t remember what I dreamed that day, perhaps because
I remember too well what Lestat and I discussed the following
evening. I see you’re anxious for that, too.
“Well, as I’ve said, Lestat amazed me in his new calm, his
thoughtfulness. But that evening I didn’t wake to nd him the
same way, not at rst. There were women in the parlor. The
candles were a few, scattered on the small tables and the carved
buet, and Lestat had his arm around one woman and was kissing
her. She was very drunk and very beautiful, a great drugged doll
of a woman with her careful coif falling slowly down on her bare
shoulders and over her partially bared breasts. The other woman
sat over a ruined supper table drinking a glass of wine. I could see
that the three of them had dined (Lestat pretending to dine…you
would be surprised how people do not notice that a vampire is
only pretending to eat), and the woman at the table was bored.
All this put me in a t of agitation. I did not know what Lestat
was up to. If I went into the room, the woman would turn her
attentions to me. And what was to happen, I couldn’t imagine,
except that Lestat meant for us to kill them both. The woman on
the settee with him was already teasing about his kisses, his
coldness, his lack of desire for her. And the woman at the table
watched with black almond eyes that seemed to be lled with
satisfaction; when Lestat rose and came to her, putting his hands
on her bare white arms, she brightened. Bending now to kiss her,
he saw me through the crack in the door. And his eyes just stared
at me for a moment, and then he went on talking with the ladies.
He bent down and blew out the candles on the table. ‘It’s too dark
in here,’ said the woman on the couch. ‘Leave us alone,’ said the
other woman. Lestat sat down and beckoned her to sit in his lap.
And she did, putting her left arm around his neck, her right hand
smoothing back his yellow hair. ‘Your skin’s icy,’ she said,
recoiling slightly. ‘Not always,’ said Lestat; and then he buried his
face in the esh of her neck. I was watching all this with
fascination. Lestat was masterfully clever and utterly vicious, but I
didn’t know how clever he was until he sank his teeth into her
now, his thumb pressing down on her throat, his other arm
locking her tight, so that he drank his ll without the other
woman even knowing. ‘Your friend has no head for wine,’ he said,
slipping out of the chair and seating the unconscious woman
there, her arms folded under her face on the table. ‘She’s stupid,’
said the other woman, who had gone to the window and had been
looking out at the lights. New Orleans was then a city of many
low buildings, as you probably know. And on such clear nights as
this, the lamplit streets were beautiful from the high windows of
this new Spanish hotel; and the stars of those days hung low over
such dim light as they do at sea. ‘I can warm that cold skin of
yours better than she can.’ She turned to Lestat, and I must
confess I was feeling some relief that he would now take care of
her as well. But he planned nothing so simple. ‘Do you think so?’
he said to her. He took her hand, and she said, ‘Why, you’re
warm.’ ”
“You mean the blood had warmed him,” said the boy.
“Oh, yes,” said the vampire. “After killing, a vampire is as
warm as you are now.” And he started to resume; then, glancing
at the boy, he smiled. “As I was saying…Lestat now held the
woman’s hand in his and said that the other had warmed him. His
face, of course, was ushed; much altered. He drew her close
now, and she kissed him, remarking through her laughter that he
was a veritable furnace of passion.
“ ‘Ah, but the price is high,’ he said to her, aecting sadness.
‘Your pretty friend…’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I exhausted
her.’ And he stood back as if inviting the woman to walk to the
table. And she did, a look of superiority on her small features. She
bent down to see her friend, but then lost interest—until she saw
something. It was a napkin. It had caught the last drops of blood
from the wound in the throat. She picked it up, straining to see it
in the darkness. ‘Take down your hair,’ said Lestat softly. And she
dropped it, indierent, and took down the last tresses, so that her
hair fell blond and wavy down her back. ‘Soft,’ he said, ‘so soft. I
picture you that way, lying on a bed of satin.’
“ ‘Such things you say!’ she scoed and turned her back on him
playfully.
“ ‘Do you know what manner of bed?’ he asked. And she
laughed and said his bed, she could imagine. She looked back at
him as he advanced; and, never once looking away from her, he
gently tipped the body of her friend, so that it fell backwards from
the chair and lay with staring eyes upon the oor. The woman
gasped. She scrambled away from the corpse, nearly upsetting a
small end table. The candle went over and went out. ‘Put out the
light…and then put out the light,’ Lestat said softly. And then he
took her into his arms like a struggling moth and sank his teeth
into her.”
“But what were you thinking as you watched?” asked the boy.
“Did you want to stop him the way you wanted to stop him from
killing Freniere?”
“No,” said the vampire. “I could not have stopped him. And you
must understand I knew that he killed humans every night.
Animals gave him no satisfaction whatsoever. Animals were to be
banked on when all else failed, but never to be chosen. If I felt
any sympathy for the women, it was buried deep in my own
turmoil. I still felt in my chest the little hammer heart of that
starving child; I still burned with the questions of my own divided
nature. I was angry that Lestat had staged this show for me,
waiting till I woke to kill the women; and I wondered again if I
might somehow break loose from him and felt both hatred and
my own weakness more than ever.
“Meantime, he propped their lovely corpses at the table and
went about the room lighting all the candles until it blazed as if
for a wedding. ‘Come in, Louis,’ he said. ‘I would have arranged
an escort for you, but I know what a man you are about choosing
your own. Pity Mademoiselle Freniere likes to hurl aming
lanterns. It makes a party unwieldy, don’t you think? Especially
for a hotel?’ He seated the blond-haired girl so that her head lay
to one side against the damask back of the chair, and the darker
woman lay with her chin resting just above her breasts; this one
had blanched, and her features had a rigid look to them already,
as though she was one of those women in whom the re of
personality makes beauty. But the other looked only as if she
slept; and I was not sure that she was even dead. Lestat had made
two gashes, one in her throat and one above her left breast, and
both still bled freely. He lifted her wrist now, and slitting it with a
knife, lled two wine glasses and bade me to sit down.
“ ‘I’m leaving you,’ I said to him at once. ‘I wish to tell you that
now.’
“ ‘I thought as much,’ he answered, sitting back in the chair,
‘and I thought as well that you would make a owery
announcement. Tell me what a monster I am; what a vulgar
end.’
“ ‘I make no judgments upon you. I’m not interested in you. I
am interested in my own nature now, and I’ve come to believe I
can’t trust you to tell me the truth about it. You use knowledge
for personal power,’ I told him. And I suppose, in the manner of
many people making such an announcement, I was not looking to
him for an honest response. I was not looking to him at all. I was
mainly listening to my own words. But now I saw that his face
was once again the way it had been when he’d said we would
talk. He was listening to me. I was suddenly at a loss. I felt that
gulf between us as painfully as ever.
“ ‘Why did you become a vampire?’ I blurted out. ‘And why
such a vampire as you are! Vengeful and delighting in taking
human life even when you have no need. This girl…why did you
kill her when one would have done? And why did you frighten
her so before you killed her? And why have you propped her here
in some grotesque manner, as if tempting the gods to strike you
down for your blasphemy?’
“All this he listened to without speaking, and in the pause that
followed I again felt at a loss. Lestat’s eyes were large and
thoughtful; I’d seen them that way before, but I couldn’t
remember when, certainly not when talking to me.
“ ‘What do you think a vampire is?’ he asked me sincerely.
“ ‘I don’t pretend to know. You pretend to know. What is it?’ I
asked. And to this he answered nothing. It was as if he sensed the
insincerity of it, the spite. He just sat there looking at me with the
same still expression. Then I said, ‘I know that after leaving you, I
shall try to nd out. I’ll travel the world, if I have to, to nd other
vampires. I know they must exist; I don’t know of any reasons
why they shouldn’t exist in great numbers. And I’m condent I
shall nd vampires who have more in common with me than I
with you. Vampires who understand knowledge as I do and have
used their superior vampire nature to learn secrets of which you
don’t even dream. If you haven’t told me everything, I shall nd
things out for myself or from them, when I nd them.’
“He shook his head. ‘Louis!’ he said. ‘You are in love with your
mortal nature! You chase after the phantoms of your former self.
Freniere, his sister…these are images for you of what you were
and what you still long to be. And in your romance with mortal
life, you’re dead to your vampire nature!’
“I objected to this at once. ‘My vampire nature has been for me
the greatest adventure of my life; all that went before it was
confused, clouded; I went through mortal life like a blind man
groping from solid object to solid object. It was only when I
became a vampire that I respected for the rst time all of life. I
never saw a living, pulsing human being until I was a vampire; I
never knew what life was until it ran out in a red gush over my
lips, my hands!’ I found myself staring at the two women, the
darker one now turning a terrible shade of blue. The blonde was
breathing. ‘She’s not dead!’ I said to him suddenly.
“ ‘I know. Let her alone,’ he said. He lifted her wrist and made a
new gash by the scab of the other and lled his glass. ‘All that you
say makes sense,’ he said to me, taking a drink. ‘You are an
intellect. I’ve never been. What I’ve learned I’ve learned from
listening to men talk, not from books. I never went to school long
enough. But I’m not stupid, and you must listen to me because
you are in danger. You do not know your vampire nature. You are
like an adult who, looking back on his childhood, realizes that he
never appreciated it. You cannot, as a man, go back to the nursery
and play with your toys, asking for the love and care to be
showered on you again simply because now you know their
worth. So it is with you and mortal nature. You’ve given it up.
You no longer look “through a glass darkly.” But you cannot pass
back to the world of human warmth with your new eyes.’
“ ‘I know that well enough!’ I said. ‘But what is it that is our
nature! If I can live from the blood of animals, why should I not
live from the blood of animals rather than go through the world
bringing misery and death to human creatures!’
“ ‘Does it bring you happiness?’ he asked. ‘You wander through
the night, feeding on rats like a pauper and then moon at
Babette’s window, lled with care, yet helpless as the goddess
who came by night to watch Endymion sleep and could not have
him. And suppose you could hold her in your arms and she would
look on you without horror or disgust, what then? A few short
years to watch her suer every prick of mortality and then die
before your eyes? Does this give happiness? This is insanity,
Louis. This is vain. And what truly lies before you is vampire
nature, which is killing. For I guarantee you that if you walk the
streets tonight and strike down a woman as rich and beautiful as
Babette and suck her blood until she drops at your feet you will
have no hunger left for Babette’s prole in the candlelight or for
listening by the window for the sound of her voice. You will be
lled, Louis, as you were meant to be, with all the life that you
can hold; and you will have hunger when that’s gone for the
same, and the same, and the same. The red in this glass will be
just as red; the roses on the wallpaper just as delicately drawn.
And you’ll see the moon the same way, and the same the icker of
a candle. And with that same sensibility that you cherish you will
see death in all its beauty, life as it is only known on the very
point of death. Don’t you understand that, Louis? You alone of all
creatures can see death that way with impunity. You…alone…
under the rising moon…can strike like the hand of God!’
“He sat back now and drained the glass, and his eyes moved
over the unconscious woman. Her breasts heaved and her
eyebrows knit as if she were coming around. A moan escaped her
lips. He’d never spoken such words to me before, and I had not
thought him capable of it. ‘Vampires are killers,’ he said now.
‘Predators. Whose all-seeing eyes were meant to give them
detachment. The ability to see a human life in its entirety, not
with any mawkish sorrow but with a thrilling satisfaction in being
the end of that life, in having a hand in the divine plan.’
“ ‘That is how you see it!’ I protested. The girl moaned again;
her face was very white. Her head rolled against the back of the
chair.
“ ‘That is the way it is,’ he answered. ‘You talk of nding other
vampires! Vampires are killers! They don’t want you or your
sensibility! They’ll see you coming long before you see them, and
they’ll see your aw; and, distrusting you, they’ll seek to kill you.
They’d seek to kill you even if you were like me. Because they are
lone predators and seek for companionship no more than cats in
the jungle. They’re jealous of their secret and of their territory;
and if you nd one or more of them together it will be for safety
only, and one will be the slave of the other, the way you are of
me.’
“ ‘I’m not your slave,’ I said to him. But even as he spoke I
realized I’d been his slave all along.
“ ‘That’s how vampires increase…through slavery. How else?’
he asked. He took the girl’s wrist again, and she cried out as the
knife cut. She opened her eyes slowly as he held her wrist over
the glass. She blinked and strained to keep them open. It was as if
a veil covered her eyes. ‘You’re tired, aren’t you?’ he asked her.
She gazed at him as if she couldn’t really see him. ‘Tired!’ he said,
now leaning close and staring into her eyes. ‘You want to sleep.’
‘Yes…’ she moaned softly And he picked her up and took her into
the bedroom. Our cons rested on the carpet and against the
wall; there was a velvet-draped bed. Lestat did not put her on the
bed; he lowered her slowly into his con. ‘What are you doing?’ I
asked him, coming to the door sill. The girl was looking around
like a terried child. ‘No…’ she was moaning. And then, as he
closed the lid, she screamed. She continued to scream within the
con.
“ ‘Why do you do this, Lestat?’ I asked.
“ ‘I like to do it,’ he said. ‘I enjoy it.’ He looked at me. ‘I don’t
say that you have to enjoy it. Take your aesthete’s tastes to purer
things. Kill them swiftly if you will, but do it! Learn that you’re a
killer! Ah!’ He threw up his hands in disgust. The girl had stopped
screaming. Now he drew up a little curved-legged chair beside the
con and, crossing his legs, he looked at the con lid. His was a
black varnished con, not a pure rectangular box as they are
now, but tapered at both ends and widest where the corpse might
lay his hands upon his chest. It suggested the human form. It
opened, and the girl sat up astonished, wild-eyed, her lips blue
and trembling. ‘Lie down, love,’ he said to her, and pushed her
back; and she lay, near-hysterical, staring up at him. ‘You’re dead,
love,’ he said to her; and she screamed and turned desperately in
the con like a sh, as if her body could escape through the
sides, through the bottom. ‘It’s a con, a con!’ she cried. ‘Let
me out.’
“ ‘But we all must lie in cons, eventually,’ he said to her. ‘Lie
still, love. This is your con. Most of us never get to know what
it feels like. You know what it feels like!’ he said to her. I couldn’t
tell whether she was listening or not, or just going wild. But she
saw me in the doorway, and then she lay still, looking at Lestat
and then at me. ‘Help me!’ she said to me.
“Lestat looked at me. ‘I expected you to feel these things
instinctually, as I did,’ he said. ‘When I gave you that rst kill, I
thought you would hunger for the next and the next, that you
would go to each human life as if to a full cup, the way I had. But
you didn’t. And all this time I suppose I kept from straightening
you out because you were best weaker. I’d watch you playing
shadow in the night, staring at the falling rain, and I’d think, He’s
easy to manage, he’s simple. But you’re weak, Louis. You’re a
mark. For vampires and now for humans alike. This thing with
Babette has exposed us both. It’s as if you want us both to be
destroyed.’
“ ‘I can’t stand to watch what you’re doing,’ I said, turning my
back. The girl’s eyes were burning into my esh. She lay, all the
time he spoke, staring at me.
“ ‘You can stand it!’ he said. ‘I saw you last night with that
child. You’re a vampire, the same as I am!’
“He stood up and came towards me, but the girl rose again and
he turned to shove her down. ‘Do you think we should make her a
vampire? Share our lives with her?’ he asked. Instantly I said,
‘No!’
“ ‘Why, because she’s nothing but a whore?’ he asked. ‘A
damned expensive whore at that,’ he said.
“ ‘Can she live now? Or has she lost too much?’ I asked him.
“ ‘Touching!’ he said. ‘She can’t live.’
“ ‘Then kill her.’ She began to scream. He just sat there. I turned
around. He was smiling, and the girl had turned her face to the
satin and was sobbing. Her reason had almost entirely left her;
she was crying and praying. She was praying to the Virgin to save
her, her hands over her face now, now over her head, the wrist
smearing blood in her hair and on the satin. I bent over the con.
She was dying, it was true; her eyes were burning, but the tissue
around them was already bluish and now she smiled. ‘You won’t
let me die, will you?’ she whispered. ‘You’ll save me.’ Lestat
reached over and took her wrist. ‘But it’s too late, love,’ he said.
‘Look at your wrist, your breast.’ And then he touched the wound
in her throat. She put her hands to her throat and gasped, her
mouth open, the scream strangled. I stared at Lestat. I could not
understand why he did this. His face was as smooth as mine is
now, more animated for the blood, but cold and without emotion.
“He did not leer like a stage villain, nor hunger for her suering
as if the cruelty fed him. He simply watched her. ‘I never meant to
be bad,’ she was crying. ‘I only did what I had to do. You won’t
let this happen to me. You’ll let me go. I can’t die like this, I
can’t!’ She was sobbing, the sobs dry and thin. ‘You’ll let me go. I
have to go to the priest. You’ll let me go.’
“ ‘But my friend is a priest,’ said Lestat, smiling. As if he’d just
thought of it as a joke. ‘This is your funeral, dear. You see, you
were at a dinner party and you died. But God has given you
another chance to be absolved. Don’t you see? Tell him your sins.’
“She shook her head at rst, and then she looked at me again
with those pleading eyes. ‘Is it true?’ she whispered. ‘Well,’ said
Lestat, ‘I suppose you’re not contrite, dear. I shall have to shut the
lid!’
“ ‘Stop this, Lestat!’ I shouted at him. The girl was screaming
again, and I could not stand the sight of it any longer. I bent down
to her and took her hand. ‘I can’t remember my sins,’ she said,
just as I was looking at her wrist, resolved to kill her. ‘You mustn’t
try. Tell God only that you are sorry,’ I said, ‘and then you’ll die
and it will be over.’ She lay back, and her eyes shut. I sank my
teeth into her wrist and began to suck her dry. She stirred once as
if dreaming and said a name; and then, when I felt her heartbeat
reach that hypnotic slowness, I drew back from her, dizzy,
confused for the moment, my hands reaching for the door frame. I
saw her as if in a dream. The candles glared in the corner of my
eye. I saw her lying utterly still. And Lestat sat composed beside
her, like a mourner. His face was still. ‘Louis,’ he said to me.
‘Don’t you understand? Peace will only come to you when you
can do this every night of your life. There is nothing else. But this
is everything!’ His voice was almost tender as he spoke, and he
rose and put both his hands on my shoulders. I walked into the
parlor, shying away from his touch but not resolute enough to
push him o. ‘Come with me, out into the streets. It’s late. You
haven’t drunk enough. Let me show you what you are. Really!
Forgive me if I bungled it, left too much to nature. Come!’
“ ‘I can’t bear it, Lestat,’ I said to him. ‘You chose your
companion badly.’
“ ‘But Louis,’ he said, ‘you haven’t tried!’
The vampire stopped. He was studying the boy. And the boy,
astonished, said nothing.
“It was true what he’d said. I had not drunk enough; and
shaken by the girl’s fear, I let him lead me out of the hotel, down
the back stairs. People were coming now from the Condé Street
ballroom, and the narrow street was jammed. There were supper
parties in the hotels, and the planter families were lodged in town
in great numbers and we passed through them like a nightmare.
My agony was unbearable. Never since I was a human being had I
felt such mental pain. It was because all of Lestat’s words had
made sense to me. I knew peace only when I killed, only for that
minute; and there was no question in my mind that the killing of
anything less than a human being brought nothing but a vague
longing, the discontent which had brought me close to humans, to
watch their lives through glass. I was no vampire. And in my
pain, I asked irrationally, like a child, Could I not return? Could I
not be human again? Even as the blood of that girl was warm in
me and I felt that physical thrill and strength, I asked that
question. The faces of humans passed me like candle ames in the
night dancing on dark waves. I was sinking into the darkness. I
was weary of longing. I was turning around and around in the
street, looking at the stars and thinking, Yes, it’s true. I know
what he is saying is true, that when I kill there is no longing; and
I can’t bear this truth. I can’t bear it.
“Suddenly there was one of those arresting moments. The street
was utterly quiet. We had strayed far from the main part of the
old town and were near the ramparts. There were no lights, only
the re in a window and the far-o sound of people laughing. But
no one here. No one near us. I could feel the breeze suddenly
from the river and the hot air of the night rising and Lestat near
me, so still he might have been made of stone. Over the long, low
row of pointed roofs were the massive shapes of oak trees in the
dark, great swaying forms of myriad sounds under the low-hung
stars. The pain for the moment was gone; the confusion was gone.
I closed my eyes and heard the wind and the sound of water
owing softly, swiftly in the river. It was enough, for one
moment. And I knew that it would not endure, that it would y
away from me like something torn out of my arms, and I would
y after it, more desperately lonely than any creature under God,
to get it back. And then a voice beside me rumbled deep in the
sound of the night, a drumbeat as the moment ended, saying, ‘Do
what it is your nature to do. This is but a taste of it. Do what it is
your nature to do.’ And the moment was gone. I stood like the girl
in the parlor in the hotel, dazed and ready for the slightest
suggestion. I was nodding at Lestat as he nodded at me. ‘Pain is
terrible for you,’ he said. ‘You feel it like no other creature
because you are a vampire. You don’t want it to go on.’
“ ‘No,’ I answered him. ‘I’ll feel as I felt with her, wed to her
and weightless, caught as if by a dance.’
“ ‘That and more.’ His hand tightened on mine. ‘Don’t turn
away from it, come with me.’
“He led me quickly through the street, turning every time I
hesitated, his hand out for mine, a smile on his lips, his presence
as marvellous to me as the night he’d come in my mortal life and
told me we would be vampires. ‘Evil is a point of view,’ he
whispered now. ‘We are immortal. And what we have before us
are the rich feasts that conscience cannot appreciate and mortal
men cannot know without regret. God kills, and so shall we;
indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall
we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as
ourselves, dark angels not conned to the stinking limits of hell
but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms. I want a child
tonight. I am like a mother…I want a child!’
“I should have known what he meant. I did not. He had me
mesmerized, enchanted. He was playing to me as he had when I
was mortal; he was leading me. He was saying, ‘Your pain will
end.’
“We’d come to a street of lighted windows. It was a place of
rooming houses, sailors, atboat men. We entered a narrow door;
and then, in a hollow stone passage in which I could hear my own
breath like the wind, he crept along the wall until his shadow
leapt out in the light of a doorway beside the shadow of another
man, their heads bent together, their whispers like the rustling of
dry leaves. ‘What is it?’ I drew near him as he came back, afraid
suddenly this exhilaration in me would die. I saw again that
nightmare landscape I’d seen when I spoke with Babette; I felt the
chill of loneliness, the chill of guilt. ‘She’s there!’ he said. ‘Your
wounded one. Your daughter.’
“ ‘What do you say, what are you talking about!’
“ ‘You’ve saved her,’ he whispered. ‘I knew it. You left the
window wide on her and her dead mother, and people passing in
the street brought her here.’
“ ‘The child. The little girl!’ I gasped. But he was already
leading me through the door to stand at the end of the long ward
of wooden beds, each with a child beneath a narrow white
blanket, one candle at the end of the ward, where a nurse bent
over a small desk. We walked down the aisle between the rows.
‘Starving children, orphans,’ he said. ‘Children of plague and
fever.’ He stopped. I saw the little girl lying in the bed. And then
the man was coming, and he was whispering with Lestat; such
care for the sleeping little ones. Someone in another room was
crying. The nurse rose and hurried away.
“And now the doctor bent and wrapped the child in the blanket.
Lestat had taken money from his pocket and set it on the foot of
the bed. The doctor was saying how glad he was we’d come for
her, how most of them were orphans; they came in on the ships,
sometimes orphans too young even to tell which body was that of
their mother. He thought Lestat was the father.
“And in moments, Lestat was running through the streets with
her, the white of the blanket gleaming against his dark coat and
cape; and even to my expert vision, as I ran after him it seemed
sometimes as if the blanket ew through the night with no one
holding it, a shifting shape travelling on the wind like a leaf stood
upright and sent scurrying along a passage, trying to gain the
wind all the while and truly take ight. I caught him nally as we
approached the lamps near the Place d’Armes. The child lay pale
on his shoulder, her cheeks still full like plums, though she was
drained and near death. She opened her eyes, or rather the lids
slid back; and beneath the long curling lashes I saw a streak of
white. ‘Lestat, what are you doing? Where are you taking her?’ I
demanded. But I knew too well. He was heading for the hotel and
meant to take her into our room.
“The corpses were as we left them, one neatly set in the con
as if an undertaker had already attended her, the other in her
chair at the table. Lestat brushed past them as if he didn’t see
them, while I watched him in fascination. The candles had all
burned down, and the only light was that of the moon and the
street. I could see his iced and gleaming prole as he set the child
down on the pillow. ‘Come here, Louis, you haven’t fed enough, I
know you haven’t,’ he said with that same calm, convincing voice
he had used skillfully all evening. He held my hand in his, his
own warm and tight. ‘See her, Louis, how plump and sweet she
looks, as if even death can’t take her freshness; the will to live is
too strong! He might make a sculpture of her tiny lips and
rounded hands, but he cannot make her fade! You remember, the
way you wanted her when you saw her in that room.’ I resisted
him. I didn’t want to kill her. I hadn’t wanted to last night. And
then suddenly I remembered two conicting things and was torn
in agony: I remembered the powerful beating of her heart against
mine and I hungered for it, hungered for it so badly I turned my
back on her in the bed and would have rushed out of the room
had not Lestat held me fast; and I remembered her mother’s face
and that moment of horror when I’d dropped the child and he’d
come into the room. But he wasn’t mocking me now; he was
confusing me. ‘You want her, Louis. Don’t you see, once you’ve
taken her, then you can take whomever you wish. You wanted her
last night but you weakened, and that’s why she’s not dead.’ I
could feel it was true, what he said. I could feel again that ecstasy
of being pressed to her, her little heart going and going. ‘She’s too
strong for me…her heart, it wouldn’t give up,’ I said to him. ‘Is
she so strong?’ he smiled. He drew me close to him. ‘Take her,
Louis, I know you want her.’ And I did. I drew close to the bed
now and just watched her. Her chest barely moved with her
breath, and one small hand was tangled in her long, gold hair. I
couldn’t bear it, looking at her, wanting her not to die and
wanting her; and the more I looked at her, the more I could taste
her skin, feel my arm sliding under her back and pulling her up to
me, feel her soft neck. Soft, soft, that’s what she was, so soft. I
tried to tell myself it was best for her to die—what was to become
of her?—but these were lying thoughts. I wanted her! And so I
took her in my arms and held her, her burning cheek on mine, her
hair falling down over my wrists and brushing my eyelids, the
sweet perfume of a child strong and pulsing in spite of sickness
and death. She moaned now, stirred in her sleep, and that was
more than I could bear. I’d kill her before I’d let her wake and
know it. I went into her throat and heard Lestat saying to me
strangely, ‘Just a little tear. It’s just a little throat.’ And I obeyed
him.
“I won’t tell you again what it was like, except that it caught
me up just as it had done before, and as killing always does, only
more; so that my knees bent and I half lay on the bed, sucking her
dry, that heart pounding again that would not slow, would not
give up. And suddenly, as I went on and on, the instinctual part of
me waiting, waiting for the slowing of the heart which would
mean death, Lestat wrenched me from her. ‘But she’s not dead,’ I
whispered. But it was over. The furniture of the room emerged
from the darkness. I sat stunned, staring at her, too weak to move,
my head rolling back against the headboard of the bed, my hands
pressing down on the velvet spread. Lestat was snatching her up,
talking to her, saying a name. ‘Claudia, Claudia, listen to me,
come round, Claudia.’ He was carrying her now out of the
bedroom into the parlor, and his voice was so soft I barely heard
him. ‘You’re ill, do you hear me? You must do as I tell you to get
well.’ And then, in the pause that followed, I came to my senses. I
realized what he was doing, that he had cut his wrist and given it
to her and she was drinking. ‘That’s it, dear; more,’ he was saying
to her. ‘You must drink it to get well.’
“ ‘Damn you!’ I shouted, and he hissed at me with blazing eyes.
He sat on the settee with her locked to his wrist. I saw her white
hand clutching at his sleeve, and I could see his chest heaving for
breath and his face contorted the way I’d never seen it. He let out
a moan and whispered again to her to go on; and when I moved
from the threshold, he glared at me again, as if to say, ‘I’ll kill
you!’
“ ‘But why, Lestat?’ I whispered to him. He was trying now to
push her o, and she wouldn’t let go. With her ngers locked
around his ngers and arm she held the wrist to her mouth, a
growl coming out of her. ‘Stop, stop!’ he said to her. He was
clearly in pain. He pulled back from her and held her shoulders
with both hands. She tried desperately to reach his wrist with her
teeth, but she couldn’t; and then she looked at him with the most
innocent astonishment. He stood back, his hand out lest she move.
Then he clapped a handkerchief to his wrist and backed away
from her, towards the bell rope. He pulled it sharply, his eyes still
xed on her.
“ ‘What have you done, Lestat?’ I asked him. ‘What have you
done?’ I stared at her. She sat composed, revived, lled with life,
no sign of pallor or weakness in her, her legs stretched out
straight on the damask, her white gown soft and thin like an
angel’s gown around her small form. She was looking at Lestat.
‘Not me,’ he said to her, ‘ever again. Do you understand? But I’ll
show you what to do!’ When I tried to make him look at me and
answer me as to what he was doing, he shook me o. He gave me
such a blow with his arm that I hit the wall. Someone was
knocking now. I knew what he meant to do. Once more I tried to
reach out for him, but he spun so fast I didn’t even see him hit
me. When I did see him, I was sprawled in the chair and he was
opening the door. ‘Yes, come in, please, there’s been an accident,’
he said to the young slave boy. And then, shutting the door, he
took him from behind, so that the boy never knew what
happened. And even as he knelt over the body drinking, he
beckoned for the child, who slid from the couch and went down
on her knees and took the wrist oered her, quickly pushing back
the cu of the shirt. She gnawed rst, as if she meant to devour
his esh, and then Lestat showed her what to do. He sat back and
let her have the rest, his eye on the boy’s chest, so that when the
time came, he bent forward and said, ‘No more, he’s dying.…You
must never drink after the heart stops or you’ll be sick again, sick
to death. Do you understand?’ But she’d had enough and she sat
next to him, their backs against the legs of the settee, their legs
stretched out on the oor. The boy died in seconds. I felt weary
and sickened, as if the night had lasted a thousand years. I sat
there watching them, the child drawing close to Lestat now,
snuggling near him as he slipped his arm around her, though his
indierent eyes remained xed on the corpse. Then he looked up
at me.
“ ‘Where is Mamma?’ asked the child softly. She had a voice
equal to her physical beauty, clear like a little silver bell. It was
sensual. She was sensual. Her eyes were as wide and clear as
Babette’s. You understand that I was barely aware of what all this
meant. I knew what it might mean, but I was aghast. Now Lestat
stood up and scooped her from the oor and came towards me.
‘She’s our daughter,’ he said. ‘You’re going to live with us now.’
He beamed at her, but his eyes were cold, as if it were all a
horrible joke; then he looked at me, and his face had conviction.
He pushed her towards me. I found her on my lap, my arms
around her, feeling again how soft she was, how plump her skin
was, like the skin of warm fruit, plums warmed by sunlight; her
huge luminescent eyes were xed on me with trusting curiosity.
‘This is Louis, and I am Lestat,’ he said to her, dropping down
beside her. She looked about and said that it was a pretty room,
very pretty, but she wanted her mamma. He had his comb out and
was running it through her hair, holding the locks so as not to
pull with the comb; her hair was untangling and becoming like
satin. She was the most beautiful child I’d ever seen, and now she
glowed with the cold re of a vampire. Her eyes were a woman’s
eyes, I could see it already. She would become white and spare
like us but not lose her shape. I understood now what Lestat had
said about death, what he meant. I touched her neck where the
two red puncture wounds were bleeding just a little. I took
Lestat’s handkerchief from the oor and touched it to her neck.
‘Your mamma’s left you with us. She wants you to be happy,’ he
was saying with that same immeasurable condence. ‘She knows
we can make you very happy.’
“ ‘I want some more,’ she said, turning to the corpse on the
oor.
“ ‘No, not tonight; tomorrow night,’ said Lestat. And he went to
take the lady out of his con. The child slid o my lap, and I
followed her. She stood watching as Lestat put the two ladies and
the slave boy into the bed. He brought the covers up to their
chins. ‘Are they sick?’ asked the child.
“ ‘Yes, Claudia,’ he said. ‘They’re sick and they’re dead. You see,
they die when we drink from them.’ He came towards her and
swung her up into his arms again. We stood there with her
between us. I was mesmerized by her, by her transformed, by her
every gesture. She was not a child any longer, she was a vampire
child. ‘Now, Louis was going to leave us,’ said Lestat, his eyes
moving from my face to hers. ‘He was going to go away. But now
he’s not. Because he wants to stay and take care of you and make
you happy.’ He looked at me. ‘You’re not going, are you, Louis?’
“ ‘You bastard!’ I whispered to him. ‘You end!’
“ ‘Such language in front of your daughter,’ he said.
“ ‘I’m not your daughter,’ she said with the silvery voice. ‘I’m
my mamma’s daughter.’
“ ‘No, dear, not anymore,’ he said to her. He glanced at the
window, and then he shut the bedroom door behind us and
turned the key in the lock. ‘You’re our daughter, Louis’s daughter
and my daughter, do you see? Now, whom should you sleep with?
Louis or me?’ And then looking at me, he said, ‘Perhaps you
should sleep with Louis. After all, when I’m tired…I’m not so
kind.’ ”
THE VAMPIRE STOPPED. The boy said nothing. “A child vampire!” he
whispered nally. The vampire glanced up suddenly as though
startled, though his body made no movement. He glared at the
tape recorder as if it were something monstrous.
The boy saw that the tape was almost out. Quickly, he opened
his briefcase and drew out a new cassette, clumsily tting it into
place. He looked at the vampire as he pressed the record button.
The vampire’s face looked weary, drawn, his cheekbones more
prominent and his brilliant green eyes enormous. They had begun
at dark, which had come early on this San Francisco winter night,
and now it was just before ten p.m. The vampire straightened and
smiled and said calmly, “We are ready to go on?”
“He’d done this to the little girl just to keep you with him?”
asked the boy.
“That is dicult to say. It was a statement. I’m convinced that
Lestat was a person who preferred not to think or talk about his
motives or beliefs, even to himself. One of those people who must
act. Such a person must be pushed considerably before he will
open up and confess that there is method and thought to the way
he lives. That is what had happened that night with Lestat. He’d
been pushed to where he had to discover even for himself why he
lived as he did. Keeping me with him, that was undoubtedly part
of what pushed him. But I think, in retrospect, that he himself
wanted to know his own reasons for killing, wanted to examine
his own life. He was discovering when he spoke what he did
believe. But he did indeed want me to remain. He lived with me
in a way he could never have lived alone. And, as I’ve told you, I
was careful never to sign any property over to him, which
maddened him. That, he could not persuade me to do.” The
vampire laughed suddenly. “Look at all the other things he
persuaded me to do! How strange. He could persuade me to kill a
child, but not to part with my money.” He shook his head. “But,”
he said, “it wasn’t greed, really, as you can see. It was fear of him
that made me tight with him.”
“You speak of him as if he were dead. You say Lestat was this or
was that. Is he dead?” asked the boy.
“I don’t know,” said the vampire. “I think perhaps he is. But I’ll
come to that. We were talking of Claudia, weren’t we? There was
something else I wanted to say about Lestat’s motives that night.
Lestat trusted no one, as you see. He was like a cat, by his own
admission, a lone predator. Yet he had communicated with me
that night; he had to some extent exposed himself simply by
telling the truth. He had dropped his mockery, his condescension.
He had forgotten his perpetual anger for just a little while. And
this for Lestat was exposure. When we stood alone in that dark
street, I felt in him a communion with another I hadn’t felt since I
died. I rather think that he ushered Claudia into vampirism for
revenge.”
“Revenge, not only on you but on the world,” suggested the
boy.
“Yes. As I said, Lestat’s motives for everything revolved around
revenge.”
“Was it all started with the father? With the school?”
“I don’t know. I doubt it,” said the vampire. “But I want to go
on.”
“Oh, please go on. You have to go on! I mean, it’s only ten
o’clock.” The boy showed his watch.
The vampire looked at it, and then he smiled at the boy. The
boy’s face changed. It went blank as if from some sort of shock.
“Are you still afraid of me?” asked the vampire.
The boy said nothing, but he shrank slightly from the edge of
the table. His body elongated, his feet moved out over the bare
boards and then contracted.
“I should think you’d be very foolish if you weren’t,” said the
vampire. “But don’t be. Shall we go on?”
“Please,” said the boy. He gestured towards the machine.
“Well,” the vampire began, “our life was much changed with
Mademoiselle Claudia, as you can imagine. Her body died, yet her
senses awakened much as mine had. And I treasured in her the
signs of this. But I was not aware for quite a few days how much I
wanted her, wanted to talk with her and be with her. At rst, I
thought only of protecting her from Lestat. I gathered her into my
con every morning and would not let her out of my sight with
him if possible. This was what Lestat wanted, and he gave little
suggestions that he might do her harm. ‘A starving child is a
frightful sight,’ he said to me, ‘a starving vampire even worse.’
They’d hear her screams in Paris, he said, were he to lock her
away to die. But all this was meant for me, to draw me close and
keep me there. Afraid of eeing alone, I would not conceive of
risking it with Claudia. She was a child. She needed care.
“And there was much pleasure in caring for her. She forgot her
ve years of mortal life at once, or so it seemed, for she was
mysteriously quiet. And from time to time I even feared that she
had lost all sense, that the illness of her mortal life, combined
with the great vampire shock, might have robbed her of reason;
but this proved hardly the case. She was simply unlike Lestat and
me to such an extent I couldn’t comprehend her; for little child
she was, but also erce killer now capable of the ruthless pursuit
of blood with all a child’s demanding. And though Lestat still
threatened me with danger to her, he did not threaten her at all
but was loving to her, proud of her beauty, anxious to teach her
that we must kill to live and that we ourselves could never die.
“The plague raged in the city then, as I’ve indicated, and he
took her to the stinking cemeteries where the yellow fever and
plague victims lay in heaps while the sounds of shovels never
ceased all through the day and night. ‘This is death,’ he told her,
pointing to the decaying corpse of a woman, ‘which we cannot
suer. Our bodies will stay always as they are, fresh and alive; but
we must never hesitate to bring death, because it is how we live.’
And Claudia gazed on this with inscrutable liquid eyes.
“If there was not understanding in the early years, there was no
smattering of fear. Mute and beautiful, she played with dolls,
dressing, undressing them by the hour. Mute and beautiful, she
killed. And I, transformed by Lestat’s instruction, was now to seek
out humans in much greater numbers. But it was not only the
killing of them that soothed some pain in me which had been
constant in the dark, still nights on Pointe du Lac, when I sat with
only the company of Lestat and the old man; it was their great,
shifting numbers everywhere in streets which never grew quiet,
cabarets which never shut their doors, balls which lasted till
dawn, the music and laughter streaming out of the open windows;
people all around me now, my pulsing victims, not seen with that
great love I’d felt for my sister and Babette, but with some new
detachment and need. And I did kill them, kills innitely varied
and great distances apart, as I walked with the vampire’s sight
and light movement through this teeming, burgeoning city, my
victims surrounding me, seducing me, inviting me to their supper
tables, their carriages, their brothels. I lingered only a short while,
long enough to take what I must have, soothed in my great
melancholy that the town gave me an endless train of magnicent
strangers.
“For that was it. I fed on strangers. I drew only close enough to
see the pulsing beauty, the unique expression, the new and
passionate voice, then killed before those feelings of revulsion
could be aroused in me, that fear, that sorrow.
“Claudia and Lestat might hunt and seduce, stay long in the
company of the doomed victim, enjoying the splendid humor in
his unwitting friendship with death. But I still could not bear it.
And so to me, the swelling population was a mercy, a forest in
which I was lost, unable to stop myself, whirling too fast for
thought or pain, accepting again and again the invitation to death
rather than extending it.
“We lived meantime in one of my new Spanish town houses in
the Rue Royale, a long, lavish upstairs at above a shop I rented
to a tailor, a hidden garden court behind us, a wall secure against
the street, with tted wooden shutters and a barred carriage door
—a place of far greater luxury and security than Pointe du Lac.
Our servants were free people of color who left us to solitude
before dawn for their own homes, and Lestat bought the very
latest imports from France and Spain: crystal chandeliers and
Oriental carpets, silk screens with painted birds of paradise,
canaries singing in great domed, golden cages, and delicate
marble Grecian gods and beautifully painted Chinese vases. I did
not need the luxury any more than I had needed it before, but I
found myself enthralled with the new ood of art and craft and
design, could stare at the intricate pattern of the carpets for hours,
or watch the gleam of the lamplight change the somber colors of a
Dutch painting.
“All this Claudia found wondrous, with the quiet awe of an
unspoiled child, and marvelled when Lestat hired a painter to
make the walls of her room a magical forest of unicorns and
golden birds and laden fruit trees over sparkling streams.
“An endless train of dressmakers and shoemakers and tailors
came to our at to outt Claudia in the best of children’s fashions,
so that she was always a vision, not just of child beauty, with her
curling lashes and her glorious yellow hair, but of the taste of
nely trimmed bonnets and tiny lace gloves, aring velvet coats
and capes, and sheer white pued-sleeve gowns with gleaming
blue sashes. Lestat played with her as if she were a magnicent
doll, and I played with her as if she were a magnicent doll; and
it was her pleading that forced me to give up my rusty black for
dandy jackets and silk ties and soft gray coats and gloves and
black capes. Lestat thought the best color at all times for vampires
was black, possibly the only aesthetic principle he steadfastly
maintained, but he wasn’t opposed to anything which smacked of
style and excess. He loved the great gure we cut, the three of us
in our box at the new French Opera House or the Théâtre
d’Orléans, to which we went as often as possible, Lestat having a
passion for Shakespeare which surprised me, though he often
dozed through the operas and woke just in time to invite some
lovely lady to midnight supper, where he would use all his skill to
make her love him totally, then dispatch her violently to heaven
or hell and come home with her diamond ring to give to Claudia.
“And all this time I was educating Claudia, whispering in her
tiny seashell ear that our eternal life was useless to us if we did
not see the beauty around us, the creation of mortals everywhere;
I was constantly sounding the depth of her still gaze as she took
the books I gave her, whispered the poetry I taught her, and
played with a light but condent touch her own strange, coherent
songs on the piano. She could fall for hours into the pictures in a
book and listen to me read until she sat so still the sight of her
jarred me, made me put the book down, and just stare back at her
across the lighted room; then she’d move, a doll coming to life,
and say in the softest voice that I must read some more.
“And then strange things began to happen, for though she said
little and was the chubby, round-ngered child still, I’d nd her
tucked in the arm of my chair reading the work of Aristotle or
Boethius or a new novel just come over the Atlantic. Or pecking
out the music of Mozart we’d only heard the night before with an
infallible ear and a concentration that made her ghostly as she sat
there hour after hour discovering the music—the melody, then
the bass, and nally bringing it together. Claudia was mystery. It
was not possible to know what she knew or did not know. And to
watch her kill was chilling. She would sit alone in the dark square
waiting for the kindly gentleman or woman to nd her, her eyes
more mindless than I had ever seen Lestat’s. Like a child numbed
with fright she would whisper her plea for help to her gentle,
admiring patrons, and as they carried her out of the square, her
arms would x about their necks, her tongue between her teeth,
her vision glazed with consuming hunger. They found death fast
in those rst years, before she learned to play with them, to lead
them to the doll shop or the cafe where they gave her steaming
cups of chocolate or tea to ruddy her pale cheeks, cups she pushed
away, waiting, waiting, as if feasting silently on their terrible
kindness.
“But when that was done, she was my companion, my pupil,
her long hours spent with me consuming faster and faster the
knowledge I gave her, sharing with me some quiet understanding
which could not include Lestat. At dawn she lay with me, her
heart beating against my heart, and many times when I looked at
her—when she was at her music or painting and didn’t know I
stood in the room—I thought of that singular experience I’d had
with her and no other, that I had killed her, taken her life from
her, had drunk all of her life’s blood in that fatal embrace I’d
lavished on so many others, others who lay now moldering in the
damp earth. But she lived, she lived to put her arms around my
neck and press her tiny Cupid’s bow to my lips and put her
gleaming eye to my eye until our lashes touched and, laughing,
we reeled about the room as if to the wildest waltz. Father and
Daughter. Lover and Lover. You can imagine how well it was
Lestat did not envy us this, but only smiled on it from afar,
waiting until she came to him. Then he would take her out into
the street and they would wave to me beneath the window, o to
share what they shared: the hunt, the seduction, the kill.
“Years passed in this way. Years and years and years. Yet it
wasn’t until some time had passed that an obvious fact occurred
to me about Claudia. I suppose from the expression on your face
you’ve already guessed, and you wonder why I didn’t guess. I can
only tell you, time is not the same for me, nor was it for us then.
Day did not link to day making a taut and jerking chain; rather,
the moon rose over lapping waves.”
“Her body!” the boy said. “She was never to grow up.”
The vampire nodded. “She was to be the demon child forever,”
he said, his voice soft as if he wondered at it. “Just as I am the
young man I was when I died. And Lestat? The same. But her
mind. It was a vampire’s mind. And I strained to know how she
moved towards womanhood. She came to talk more, though she
was never other than a reective person and could listen to me
patiently by the hour without interruption. Yet more and more
her doll-like face seemed to possess two totally aware adult eyes,
and innocence seemed lost somewhere with neglected toys and
the loss of a certain patience. There was something dreadfully
sensual about her lounging on the settee in a tiny nightgown of
lace and stitched pearls; she became an eerie and powerful
seductress, her voice as clear and sweet as ever, though it had a
resonance which was womanish, a sharpness sometimes that
proved shocking. After days of her usual quiet, she would sco
suddenly at Lestat’s predictions about the war; or drinking blood
from a crystal glass say that there were no books in the house, we
must get more even if we had to steal them, and then coldly tell
me of a library she’d heard of, in a palatial mansion in the
Faubourg Ste.-Marie, a woman who collected books as if they
were rocks or pressed butteries. She asked if I might get her into
the woman’s bedroom.
“I was aghast at such moments; her mind was unpredictable,
unknowable. But then she would sit on my lap and put her ngers
in my hair and doze there against my heart, whispering to me
softly I should never be as grown up as she until I knew that
killing was the more serious thing, not the books, the music.
‘Always the music…’ she whispered. ‘Doll, doll,’ I called her.
That’s what she was. A magic doll. Laughter and innite intellect
and then the round-cheeked face, the bud mouth. ‘Let me dress
you, let me brush your hair,’ I would say to her out of old habit,
aware of her smiling and watching me with the thin veil of
boredom over her expression. ‘Do as you like,’ she breathed into
my ear as I bent down to fasten her pearl buttons. ‘Only kill with
me tonight. You never let me see you kill, Louis!’
“She wanted a con of her own now, which left me more
wounded than I would let her see. I walked out after giving my
gentlemanly consent; for how many years had I slept with her as
if she were part of me I couldn’t know. But then I found her near
the Ursuline Convent, an orphan lost in the darkness, and she ran
suddenly towards me and clutched at me with a human
desperation. ‘I don’t want it if it hurts you,’ she conded so softly
that a human embracing us both could not have heard her or felt
her breath. ‘I’ll stay with you always. But I must see it, don’t you
understand? A con for a child.’
“We were to go to the conmaker’s. A play, a tragedy in one
act: I to leave her in his little parlor and conde to him in the
anteroom that she was to die. Talk of love, she must have the
best, but she must not know; and the conmaker, shaken with
the tragedy of it, must make it for her, picturing her laid there on
the white satin, dabbing a tear from his eye despite all the
years….
“ ‘But, why, Claudia…’ I pleaded with her. I loathed to do it,
loathed cat and mouse with the helpless human. But hopelessly
her lover, I took her there and set her on the sofa, where she sat
with folded hands in her lap, her tiny bonnet bent down, as if she
didn’t know what we whispered about her in the foyer. The
undertaker was an old and greatly rened man of color who drew
me swiftly aside lest ‘the baby’ should hear. ‘But why must she
die?’ he begged me, as if I were God who ordained it. ‘Her heart,
she cannot live,’ I said, the words taking on for me a peculiar
power, a disturbing resonance. The emotion in his narrow,
heavily lined face disturbed me; something came to my mind, a
quality of light, a gesture, the sound of something…a child crying
in a stench-lled room. Now he unlocked one after another of his
long rooms and showed me the cons, black lacquer and silver,
she wanted that. And suddenly I found myself backing away from
him out of the con-house, hurriedly taking her hand. ‘The
order’s been taken,’ I said to her. ‘It’s driving me mad!’ I breathed
the fresh air of the street as though I’d been suocated and then I
saw her compassionless face studying mine. She slipped her small
gloved hand back into my own. ‘I want it, Louis,’ she explained
patiently.
“And then one night she climbed the undertaker’s stairs, Lestat
beside her, for the con, and left the conmaker, unawares,
dead across the dusty piles of papers on his desk. And there the
con lay in our bedroom, where she watched it often by the hour
when it was new, as if the thing were moving or alive or unfolded
some mystery to her little by little, as things do which change. But
she did not sleep in it. She slept with me.
“There were other changes in her. I cannot date them or put
them in order. She did not kill indiscriminately. She fell into
demanding patterns. Poverty began to fascinate her; she begged
Lestat or me to take a carriage out through the Faubourg Ste.-
Marie to the riverfront places where the immigrants lived. She
seemed obsessed with the women and children. These things
Lestat told me with great amusement, for I was loath to go and
would sometimes not be persuaded under any circumstance. But
Claudia had a family there which she took one by one. And she
had asked to enter the cemetery of the suburb city of Lafayette
and there roam the high marble tombs in search of those
desperate men who, having no place else to sleep, spend what
little they have on a bottle of wine, and crawl into a rotting vault.
Lestat was impressed, overcome. What a picture he made of her,
the infant death, he called her. Sister death, and sweet death; and
for me, mockingly, he had the term with a sweeping bow,
Merciful Death! which he said like a woman clapping her hands
and shouting out a word of exciting gossip: oh, merciful heavens!
so that I wanted to strangle him.
“But there was no quarrelling. We kept to ourselves. We had
our adjustments. Books lled our long at from oor to ceiling in
row after row of gleaming leather volumes, as Claudia and I
pursued our natural tastes and Lestat went about his lavish
acquisitions. Until she began to ask questions.”
The vampire stopped. And the boy looked as anxious as before, as
if patience took the greatest eort. But the vampire had brought
his long, white ngers together as if to make a church steeple and
then folded them and pressed his palms tight. It was as if he’d
forgotten the boy altogether. “I should have known,” he said,
“that it was inevitable, and I should have seen the signs of it
coming. For I was so attuned to her; I loved her so completely; she
was so much the companion of my every waking hour, the only
companion that I had, other than death. I should have known. But
something in me was conscious of an enormous gulf of darkness
very close to us, as though we walked always near a sheer cli
and might see it suddenly but too late if we made the wrong turn
or became too lost in our thoughts. Sometimes the physical world
about me seemed insubstantial except for that darkness. As if a
fault in the earth were about to open and I could see the great
crack breaking down the Rue Royale, and all the buildings were
falling to dust in the rumble. But worst of all, they were
transparent, gossamer, like stage drops made of silk. Ah…I’m
distracted. What do I say? That I ignored the signs in her, that I
clung desperately to the happiness she’d given me. And still gave
me; and ignored all else.
“But these were the signs. She grew cold to Lestat. She fell to
staring at him for hours. When he spoke, often she didn’t answer
him, and one could hardly tell if it was contempt or that she
didn’t hear. And our fragile domestic tranquillity erupted with his
outrage. He did not have to be loved, but he would not be
ignored; and once he even ew at her, shouting that he would
slap her, and I found myself in the wretched position of ghting
him as I’d done years before she’d come to us. ‘She’s not a child
any longer,’ I whispered to him. ‘I don’t know what it is. She’s a
woman.’ I urged him to take it lightly, and he aected disdain and
ignored her in turn. But one evening he came in ustered and told
me she’d followed him—though she’d refused to go with him to
kill, she’d followed him afterwards. ‘What’s the matter with her!’
he ared at me, as though I’d given birth to her and must know.
“And then one night our servants vanished. Two of the best
maids we’d ever retained, a mother and daughter. The coachman
was sent to their house only to report they’d disappeared, and
then the father was at our door, pounding the knocker. He stood
back on the brick sidewalk regarding me with that grave
suspicion that sooner or later crept into the faces of all mortals
who knew us for any length of time, the forerunner of death, as
pallor might be to a fatal fever; and I tried to explain to him they
had not been here, mother or daughter, and we must begin some
search.
“ ‘It’s she!’ Lestat hissed from the shadows when I shut the gate.
‘She’s done something to them and brought risk for us all. I’ll
make her tell me!’ And he pounded up the spiral stairs from the
courtyard. I knew that she’d gone, slipped out while I was at the
gate, and I knew something else also: that a vague stench came
across the courtyard from the shut, unused kitchen, a stench that
mingled uneasily with the honeysuckle—the stench of graveyards.
I heard Lestat coming down as I approached the warped shutters,
locked with rust to the small brick building. No food was ever
prepared there, no work ever done, so that it lay like an old brick
vault under the tangles of honeysuckle. The shutters came loose,
the nails having turned to dust, and I heard Lestat’s gasp as we
stepped into the reeking dark. There they lay on the bricks,
mother and daughter together, the arm of the mother fastened
around the waist of the daughter, the daughter’s head bent
against the mother’s breast, both foul with feces and swarming
with insects. A great cloud of gnats rose as the shutter fell back,
and I waved them away from me in a convulsive disgust. Ants
crawled undisturbed over the eyelids, the mouths of the dead
pair, and in the moonlight I could see the endless map of silvery
paths of snails. ‘Damn her!’ Lestat burst out, and I grabbed his
arm and held him fast, pitting all my strength against him. ‘What
do you mean to do with her!’ I insisted. ‘What can you do? She’s
not a child anymore that will do what we say simply because we
say it. We must teach her.’
“ ‘She knows!’ He stood back from me brushing his coat. ‘She
knows! She’s known for years what to do! What can be risked and
what cannot. I won’t have her do this without my permission! I
won’t tolerate it.’
“ ‘Then, are you master of us all? You didn’t teach her that. Was
she supposed to imbibe it from my quiet subservience? I don’t
think so. She sees herself as equal to us now, and us as equal to
each other. I tell you we must reason with her, instruct her to
respect what is ours. As all of us should respect it.’
“He stalked o, obviously absorbed in what I’d said, though he
would give no admission of it to me. And he took his vengeance
to the city. Yet when he came home, fatigued and satiated, she
was still not there. He sat against the velvet arm of the couch and
stretched his long legs out on the length of it. ‘Did you bury
them?’ he asked me.
“ ‘They’re gone,’ I said. I did not care to say even to myself that
I had burned their remains in the old unused kitchen stove. ‘But
there is the father to deal with, and the brother,’ I said to him. I
feared his temper. I wished at once to plan some way to quickly
dispose of the whole problem. But he said now that the father and
the brother were no more, that death had come to dinner in their
small house near the ramparts and stayed to say grace when
everyone was done. ‘Wine,’ he whispered now, running his nger
on his lip. ‘Both of them had drunk too much wine. I found myself
tapping the fence posts with a stick to make a tune,’ he laughed.
‘But I don’t like it, the dizziness. Do you like it?’ And when he
looked at me I had to smile at him because the wine was working
in him and he was mellow; and in that moment when his face
looked warm and reasonable, I leaned over and said, ‘I hear
Claudia’s tap on the stairs. Be gentle with her. It’s all done.’
“She came in then, with her bonnet ribbons undone and her
little boots caked with dirt. I watched them tensely, Lestat with a
sneer on his lips, she as unconscious of him as if he weren’t there.
She had a bouquet of white chrysanthemums in her arms, such a
large bouquet it made her all the more a small child. Her bonnet
fell back now, hung on her shoulder for an instant, and then fell
to the carpet. And all through her golden hair I saw the narrow
petals of the chrysanthemums. ‘Tomorrow is the Feast of All
Saints,’ she said. ‘Do you know?’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said to her. It is the day in New Orleans when all the
faithful go to the cemeteries to care for the graves of their loved
ones. They whitewash the plaster walls of the vaults, clean the
names cut into the marble slabs. And nally they deck the tombs
with owers. In the St. Louis Cemetery, which was very near our
house, in which all the great Louisiana families were buried, in
which my own brother was buried, there were even little iron
benches set before the graves where the families might sit to
receive the other families who had come to the cemetery for the
same purpose. It was a festival in New Orleans; a celebration of
death, it might have seemed to tourists who didn’t understand it,
but it was a celebration of the life after. ‘I bought this from one of
the vendors,’ Claudia said. Her voice was soft and inscrutable. Her
eyes opaque and without emotion.
“ ‘For the two you left in the kitchen!’ Lestat said ercely. She
turned to him for the rst time, but she said nothing. She stood
there staring at him as if she’d never seen him before. And then
she took several steps towards him and looked at him, still as if
she were positively examining him. I moved forward. I could feel
his anger. Her coldness. And now she turned to me. And then,
looking from one to the other of us, she asked:
“ ‘Which of you did it? Which of you made me what I am?’
“I could not have been more astonished at anything she might
have said or done. And yet it was inevitable that her long silence
would thus be broken. She seemed very little concerned with me,
though. Her eyes xed on Lestat. ‘You speak of us as if we always
existed as we are now,’ she said, her voice soft, measured, the
child’s tone rounded with the woman’s seriousness. ‘You speak of
them out there as mortals, us as vampires. But it was not always
so. Louis had a mortal sister, I remember her. And there is a
picture of her in his trunk. I’ve seen him look at it! He was mortal
the same as she; and so was I. Why else this size, this shape?’ She
opened her arms now and let the chrysanthemums fall to the
oor. I whispered her name. I think I meant to distract her. It was
impossible. The tide had turned. Lestat’s eyes burned with a keen
fascination, a malignant pleasure.
“ ‘You made us what we are, didn’t you?’ she accused him.
“He raised his eyebrows now in mock amazement. ‘What you
are?’ he asked. ‘And would you be something other than what you
are!’ He drew up his knees and leaned forward, his eyes narrow.
‘Do you know how long it’s been? Can you picture yourself? Must
I nd a hag to show you your mortal countenance now if I had let
you alone?’
“She turned away from him, stood for a moment as if she had
no idea what she would do, and then she moved towards the chair
beside the replace and, climbing on it, curled up like the most
helpless child. She brought her knees up close to her, her velvet
coat open, her silk dress tight around her knees, and she stared at
the ashes in the hearth. But there was nothing helpless about her
stare. Her eyes had independent life, as if the body were
possessed.
“ ‘You could be dead by now if you were mortal!’ Lestat insisted
to her, pricked by her silence. He drew his legs around and set his
boots on the oor. ‘Do you hear me? Why do you ask me this
now? Why do you make such a thing of it? You’ve known all your
life you’re a vampire.’ And so he went on in a tirade, saying much
the same things he’d said to me many times over: know your
nature, kill, be what you are. But all of this seemed strangely
beside the point. For Claudia had no qualms about killing. She sat
back now and let her head roll slowly to where she could see him
across from her. She was studying him again, as if he were a
puppet on strings. ‘Did you do it to me? And how?’ she asked, her
eyes narrowing. ‘How did you do it?’
“ ‘And why should I tell you? It’s my power.’
“ ‘Why yours alone?’ she asked, her voice icy, her eyes
heartless. ‘How was it done?’ she demanded suddenly in rage.
“It was electric. He rose from the couch, and I was on my feet
immediately, facing him. ‘Stop her!’ he said to me. He wrung his
hands. ‘Do something about her! I can’t endure her!’ And then he
started for the door, but turned and, coming back, drew very close
so that he towered over Claudia, putting her in a deep shadow.
She glared up at him fearlessly, her eyes moving back and forth
over his face with total detachment. ‘I can undo what I did. Both
to you and to him,’ he said to her, his nger pointing at me across
the room. ‘Be glad I made you what you are,’ he sneered. ‘Or I’ll
break you in a thousand pieces!’ ”
“Well, the peace of the house was destroyed, though there was
quiet. Days passed and she asked no questions, though now she
was deep into books of the occult, of witches and witchcraft, and
of vampires. This was mostly fancy, you understand. Myth, tales,
sometimes mere romantic horror tales. But she read it all. Till
dawn she read, so that I had to go and collect her and bring her to
bed.
“Lestat, meantime, hired a butler and maid and had a team of
workers in to make a great fountain in the courtyard with a stone
nymph pouring water eternal from a widemouthed shell. He had
goldsh brought and boxes of rooted water lilies set into the
fountain so their blossoms rested upon the surface and shivered in
the ever-moving water.
“A woman had seen him kill on the Nyades Road, which ran to
the town of Carrolton, and there were stories of it in the papers,
associating him with a haunted house near Nyades and
Melpomene, all of which delighted him. He was the Hyades Road
ghost for some time, though it nally fell to the back pages; and
then he performed another grisly murder in another public place
and set the imagination of New Orleans to working. But all this
had about it some quality of fear. He was pensive, suspicious,
drew close to me constantly to ask where Claudia was, where
she’d gone, and what she was doing.
“ ‘She’ll be all right,’ I assured him, though I was estranged
from her and in agony, as if she’d been my bride. She hardly saw
me now, as she’d not seen Lestat before, and she might walk away
while I spoke to her.
“ ‘She had better be all right!’ he said nastily.
“ ‘And what will you do if she’s not?’ I asked, more in fear than
accusation.
“He looked up at me with his cold gray eyes. ‘You take care of
her, Louis. You talk to her!’ he said. ‘Everything was perfect, and
now this. There’s no need for it.’
“But it was my choice to let her come to me, and she did. It was
early one evening when I’d just awakened. The house was dark. I
saw her standing by the French windows; she wore pued sleeves
and a pink sash and was watching with lowered lashes the
evening rush in the Rue Royale. I could hear Lestat in his room,
the sound of water splashing from his pitcher. The faint smell of
his cologne came and went like the sound of music from the cafe
two doors down from us. ‘He’ll tell me nothing,’ she said softly. I
hadn’t realized she knew that I had opened my eyes. I came
towards her and knelt beside her. ‘You’ll tell me, won’t you? How
it was done.’
“ ‘Is this what you truly want to know?’ I asked, searching her
face. ‘Or is it why it was done to you…and what you were before?
I don’t understand what you mean by “how,” for if you mean how
was it done so that you in turn may do it.…’
“ ‘I don’t even know what it is. What you’re saying,’ she said
with a touch of coldness. Then she turned full around and put her
hands on my face. ‘Kill with me tonight,’ she whispered as
sensuously as a lover. ‘And tell me all that you know. What are
we? Why are we not like them?’ She looked down into the street.
“ ‘I don’t know the answers to your questions,’ I said to her. Her
face contorted suddenly, as if she were straining to hear me over a
sudden noise. And then she shook her head. But I went on. ‘I
wonder the same things you wonder. I do not know. How I was
made, I’ll tell you that…that Lestat did it to me. But the real
“how” of it, I don’t know!’ Her face had that same look of strain. I
was seeing in it the rst traces of fear, or something worse and
deeper than fear. ‘Claudia,’ I said to her, putting my hands over
her hands and pressing them gently against my skin. ‘Lestat has
one wise thing to tell you. Don’t ask these questions. You’ve been
my companion for countless years in my search for all that I could
learn of mortal life and mortal creation. Don’t be my companion
now in this anxiety. He can’t give us the answers. And I have
none.’
“I could see she could not accept this, but I hadn’t expected the
convulsive turning away, the violence with which she tore at her
own hair for an instant and then stopped as if the gesture were
useless, stupid. It lled me with apprehension. She was looking at
the sky. It was smoky, starless, the clouds blowing fast from the
direction of the river. She made a sudden movement of her lips as
if she’d bitten into them, then she turned to me and, still
whispering, she said, ‘Then he made me…he did it…you did not!’
There was something so dreadful about her expression, I’d left her
before I meant to do it. I was standing before the replace
lighting a single candle in front of the tall mirror. And there
suddenly, I saw something which startled me, gathering out of the
gloom rst as a hideous mask, then becoming its three-
dimensional reality: a weathered skull. I stared at it. It smelled
faintly of the earth still, but had been scrubbed. ‘Why don’t you
answer me?’ she was asking. I heard Lestat’s door open. He would
go out to kill at once, at least to nd the kill. I would not.
“I would let the rst hours of the evening accumulate in quiet,
as hunger accumulated in me, till the drive grew almost too
strong, so that I might give myself to it all the more completely,
blindly. I heard her question again clearly, as though it had been
oating in the air like the reverberation of a bell…and felt my
heart pounding. ‘He did make me, of course! He said so himself.
But you hide something from me. Something he hints at when I
question him. He says that it could not have been done without
you!’
“I found myself staring at the skull, yet hearing her as if the
words were lashing me, lashing me to make me turn around and
face the lash. The thought went through me more like a ash of
cold than a thought, that nothing should remain of me now but
such a skull. I turned around and saw in the light from the street
her eyes, like two dark ames in her white face. A doll from
whom someone had cruelly ripped the eyes and replaced them
with a demonic re. I found myself moving towards her,
whispering her name, some thought forming on my lips, then
dying, coming towards her, then away from her, fussing for her
coat and her hat. I saw a tiny glove on the oor which was
phosphorescent in the shadows, and for just a moment I thought it
a tiny, severed hand.
“ ‘What’s the matter with you…?’ She drew nearer, looking up
into my face. ‘What has always been the matter? Why do you stare
at the skull like that, at the glove?’ She asked this gently, but…
not gently enough.
“There was a slight calculation in her voice, an unreachable
detachment.
“ ‘I need you,’ I said to her, without wanting to say it. ‘I cannot
bear to lose you. You’re the only companion I have in
immortality.’
“ ‘But surely there must be others! Surely we are not the only
vampires on earth!’ I heard her saying it as I had said it, heard my
own words coming back to me now on the tide of her self-
awareness, her searching. But there’s no pain, I thought suddenly.
There’s urgency, heartless urgency. I looked down at her. ‘Aren’t
you the same as I?’ She looked at me. ‘You’ve taught me all I
know!’
“ ‘Lestat taught you to kill.’ I fetched the glove. ‘Here, come…
let’s go out. I want to go out.…’ I was stammering, trying to force
the gloves on her. I lifted the great curly mass of her hair and
placed it gently over her coat. ‘But you taught me to see!’ she
said. ‘You taught me the words vampire eyes,’ she said. ‘You taught
me to drink the world, to hunger for more than…’
“ ‘I never meant those words that way, vampire eyes,’ I said to
her. ‘It has a dierent ring when you say it….’ She was tugging at
me, trying to make me look at her. ‘Come,’ I said to her, ‘I’ve
something to show you.…’ And quickly I led her down the
passage and down the spiral stairs through the dark courtyard.
But I no more knew what I had to show her, really, than I knew
where I was going. Only that I had to move towards it with a
sublime and doomed instinct.
“We rushed through the early evening city, the sky overhead a
pale violet now that the clouds were gone, the stars small and
faint, the air around us sultry and fragrant even as we moved
away from the spacious gardens, towards those mean and narrow
streets where the owers erupt in the cracks of the stones and the
huge oleander shoots out thick, waxen stems of white and pink
blooms, like a monstrous weed in the empty lots. I heard the
staccato of Claudia’s steps as she rushed beside me, never once
asking me to slacken my pace; and she stood nally, her face
innitely patient, looking up at me in a dark and narrow street
where a few old slope-roofed French houses remained among the
Spanish façades, ancient little houses, the plaster blistered from
the moldering brick beneath. I had found the house now by a
blind eort, aware that I had always known where it was and
avoided it, always turned before this dark lampless corner, not
wishing to pass the low window where I’d rst heard Claudia cry.
The house was standing still. Sunk lower than it was in those
days, the alleyway crisscrossed with sagging cords of laundry, the
weeds high along the low foundation, the two dormer windows
broken and patched with cloth. I touched the shutters. ‘It was
here I rst saw you,’ I said to her, thinking to tell it to her so she
would understand, yet feeling now the chill of her gaze, the
distance of her stare. ‘I heard you crying. You were there in a
room with your mother. And your mother was dead. Dead for
days, and you didn’t know. You clung to her, whining…crying
pitifully, your body white and feverish and hungry. You were
trying to wake her from the dead, you were hugging her for
warmth, for fear. It was almost morning and…’
“I put my hand to my temples. ‘I opened the shutters…I came
into the room. I felt pity for you. Pity. But…something else.’
“I saw her lips slack, her eyes wide. ‘You…fed on me?’ she
whispered. ‘I was your victim!’
“ ‘Yes!’ I said to her. ‘I did it.’ ”
“There was a moment so elastic and painful as to be
unbearable. She stood stark-still in the shadows, her huge eyes
gathering the light, the warm air rising suddenly with a soft noise.
And then she turned. I heard the clicking of her slippers as she
ran. And ran. And ran. I stood frozen, hearing the sound grow
smaller and smaller; and then I turned, the fear in me unravelling,
growing huge and insurmountable, and I ran after her. It was
unthinkable that I not catch her, that I not overtake her at once
and tell her that I loved her, must have her, must keep her, and
every second that I ran headlong down the dark street after her
was like her slipping away from me drop by drop; my heart was
pounding, unfed, pounding and rebelling against the strain. Until
I came suddenly to a dead stop. She stood beneath a lamppost,
staring mutely, as if she didn’t know me. I took her small waist in
both hands and lifted her into the light. She studied me, her face
contorted, her head turning as if she wouldn’t give me her direct
glance, as if she must deect an overpowering feeling of
revulsion. ‘You killed me,’ she whispered. ‘You took my life!’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said to her, holding her so that I could feel her heart
pounding. ‘Rather, I tried to take it. To drink it away. But you had
a heart like no other heart I’ve ever felt, a heart that beat and beat
until I had to let you go, had to cast you away from me lest you
quicken my pulse till I would die. And it was Lestat who found me
out; Louis the sentimentalist, the fool, feasting on a golden-haired
child, a Holy Innocent, a little girl. He brought you back from the
hospital where they’d put you, and I never knew what he meant
to do except teach me my nature. “Take her, nish it,” he said.
And I felt that passion for you again. Oh, I know I’ve lost you now
forever. I can see it in your eyes! You look at me as you look on
mortals, from aloft, from some region of cold self-suciency I
can’t understand. But I did it. I felt it for you again, a vile
unsupportable hunger for your hammering heart, this cheek, this
skin. You were pink and fragrant as mortal children are, sweet
with the bite of salt and dust. I held you again, I took you again.
And when I thought your heart would kill me and I didn’t care, he
parted us and, gashing his own wrist, gave it to you to drink. And
drink you did. And drink and drink until you nearly drained him
and he was reeling. But you were a vampire then. And that very
night you drank a human’s blood and have every night thereafter.’
“Her face had not changed. The esh was like the wax of ivory
candles; only the eyes showed life. There was nothing more to say
to her. I set her down. ‘I took your life,’ I said. ‘He gave it back to
you.’
“ ‘And here it is,’ she said under her breath. ‘And I hate you
both!’ ”
The vampire stopped.
“But why did you tell her?” asked the boy after a respectful
pause.
“How could I not tell her?” The vampire looked up in mild
astonishment. “She had to know it. She had to weigh one thing
against the other. It was not as if Lestat had taken her full from
life as he had taken me; I had stricken her. She would have died!
There would have been no mortal life for her. But what’s the
dierence? For all of us it’s a matter of years, dying! So what she
saw more graphically then was what all men know: that death
will come inevitably, unless one chooses…this!” He opened his
white hands now and looked at the palms.
“And did you lose her? Did she go?”
“Go! Where would she have gone? She was a child no bigger
than that. Who would have sheltered her? Would she have found
some vault, like a mythical vampire, lying down with worms and
ants by day and rising to haunt some small cemetery and its
surroundings? But that’s not why she didn’t go. Something in her
was as akin to me as anything in her could have been. That thing
in Lestat was the same. We could not bear to live alone! We
needed our little company! A wilderness of mortals surrounded
us, groping, blind, preoccupied, and the brides and bridegrooms
of death.
“ ‘Locked together in hatred,’ she said to me calmly afterwards.
I found her by the empty hearth, picking the small blossoms from
a long stem of lavender. I was so relieved to see her there that I
would have done anything, said anything. And when I heard her
ask me in a low voice if I would tell her all I knew, I did this
gladly. For all the rest was nothing compared to that old secret,
that I had claimed her life. I told her of myself as I’ve told you, of
how Lestat came to me and what went on the night he carried her
from the little hospital. She asked no questions and only
occasionally looked up from her owers. And then, when it was
nished and I was sitting there, staring again at that wretched
skull and listening to the soft slithering of the petals of the owers
on her dress and feeling a dull misery in my limbs and mind, she
said to me, ‘I don’t despise you!’ I wakened. She slipped o the
high, rounded damask cushion and came towards me, covered
with the scent of owers, the petals in her hand. ‘Is this the aroma
of mortal child?’ she whispered. ‘Louis. Lover.’ I remember
holding her and burying my head in her small chest, crushing her
bird-shoulders, her small hands working into my hair, soothing
me, holding me. ‘I was mortal to you,’ she said, and when I lifted
my eyes I saw her smiling; but the softness on her lips was
evanescent, and in a moment she was looking past me like
someone listening for faint, important music. ‘You gave me your
immortal kiss,’ she said, though not to me, but to herself. ‘You
loved me with your vampire nature.’
“ ‘I love you now with my human nature, if ever I had it,’ I said
to her.
“ ‘Ah yes…’ she answered, still musing. ‘Yes, and that’s your
aw, and why your face was miserable when I said as humans
say, “I hate you,” and why you look at me as you do now. Human
nature. I have no human nature. And no short story of a mother’s
corpse and hotel rooms where children learn monstrosity can give
me one. I have none. Your eyes grow cold with fear when I say
this to you. Yet I have your tongue. Your passion for the truth.
Your need to drive the needle of the mind right to the heart of it
all, like the beak of the hummingbird, who beats so wild and fast
that mortals might think he had no tiny feet, could never set, just
go from quest to quest, going again and again for the heart of it. I
am your vampire self more than you are. And now the sleep of
sixty-ve years has ended.’
“The sleep of sixty-ve years has ended! I heard her say it,
disbelieving, not wanting to believe she knew and meant precisely
what she’d said. For it had been exactly that since the night I tried
to leave Lestat and failed and, falling in love with her, forgot my
teeming brain, my awful questions. And now she had the awful
questions on her lips and must know. She’d strolled slowly to the
center of the room and strewn the crumpled lavender all around
her. She broke the brittle stem and touched it to her lips. And
having heard the whole story said, ‘He made me then…to be your
companion. No chains could have held you in your loneliness, and
he could give you nothing. He gives me nothing….I used to think
him charming. I liked the way he walked, the way he tapped the
agstones with his walking stick and swung me in his arms. And
the abandon with which he killed, which was as I felt. But I no
longer nd him charming. And you never have. And we’ve been
his puppets, you and I; you remaining to take care of him, and I
your saving companion. Now’s time to end it, Louis. Now’s time
to leave him.’
“Time to leave him.
“I hadn’t thought of it, dreamed of it in so long; I’d grown
accustomed to him, as if he were a condition of life itself. I could
hear a vague mingling of sounds now, which meant he had
entered the carriage way, that he would soon be on the back
stairs. And I thought of what I always felt when I heard him
coming, a vague anxiety, a vague need. And then the thought of
being free of him forever rushed over me like water I’d forgotten,
waves and waves of cool water. I was standing now, whispering
to her that he was coming.
“ ‘I know,’ she smiled. ‘I heard him when he turned the far
corner.’
“ ‘But he’ll never let us leave,’ I whispered, though I’d caught
the implication of her words; her vampire sense was keen. She
stood en garde magnicently. ‘But you don’t know him if you
think he’ll let us leave,’ I said to her, alarmed at her self-
condence. ‘He will not let us go.’
“And she, still smiling, said, ‘Oh…really?’ ”
“It was agreed then to make plans. At once. The following night
my agent came with his usual complaints about doing business by
the light of one wretched candle and took my explicit orders for
an ocean crossing. Claudia and I would go to Europe, on the rst
available ship, regardless of what port we had to settle for. And
paramount was that an important chest be shipped with us, a
chest which might have to be fetched carefully from our house
during the day and put on board, not in the freight but in our
cabin. And then there were arrangements for Lestat. I had planned
to leave him the rents from several shops and town houses and a
small construction company operating in the Faubourg Marigny. I
put my signature to these things readily. I wanted to buy our
freedom: to convince Lestat we wanted only to take a trip
together and that he could remain in the style to which he was
accustomed; he would have his own money and need come to me
for nothing. For all these years, I’d kept him dependent on me. Of
course, he demanded his funds from me as if I were merely his
banker, and thanked me with the most acrimonious words at his
command; but he loathed his dependence. I hoped to deect his
suspicion by playing to his greed. And, convinced that he could
read any emotion in my face, I was more than fearful. I did not
believe it would be possible to escape him. Do you understand
what that means? I acted as though I believed it, but I did not.
“Claudia, meantime, was irting with disaster, her equanimity
overwhelming to me as she read her vampire books and asked
Lestat questions. She remained undisturbed by his caustic
outbursts, sometimes asking the same question over and over
again in dierent ways and carefully considering what little
information he might let escape in spite of himself. ‘What vampire
made you what you are?’ she asked, without looking up from her
book and keeping her lids lowered under his onslaught. ‘Why do
you never talk about him?’ she went on, as if his erce objections
were thin air. She seemed immune to his irritation.
“ ‘You’re greedy, both of you!’ he said the next night as he
paced back and forth in the dark of the center of the room,
turning a vengeful eye on Claudia, who was tted into her corner,
in the circle of her candle ame, her books in stacks about her.
‘Immortality is not enough for you! No, you would look the Gift
Horse of God in the mouth! I could oer it to any man out there
in the street and he would jump for it…’
“ ‘Did you jump for it?’ she asked softly, her lips barely moving.
“ ‘…but you, you would know the reason for it. Do you want to
end it? I can give you death more easily than I gave you life!’ He
turned to me, her fragile ame throwing his shadow across me. It
made a halo around his blond hair and left his face, except for the
gleaming cheekbone, dark. ‘Do you want death?’
“ ‘Consciousness is not death,’ she whispered.
“ ‘Answer me! Do you want death!’
“ ‘And you give all these things. They proceed from you. Life
and death,’ she whispered, mocking him.
“ ‘I have,’ he said. ‘I do.’
“ ‘You know nothing,’ she said to him gravely, her voice so low
that the slightest noise from the street interrupted it, might carry
her words away, so that I found myself straining to hear her
against myself as I lay with my head back against the chair. ‘And
suppose the vampire who made you knew nothing, and the
vampire who made that vampire knew nothing, and the vampire
before him knew nothing, and so it goes back and back, nothing
proceeding from nothing, until there is nothing! And we must live
with the knowledge that there is no knowledge.’
“ ‘Yes!’ he cried out suddenly, his hands out, his voice tinged
with something other than anger.
“He was silent. She was silent. He turned, slowly, as if I’d made
some movement which alerted him, as if I were rising behind him.
It reminded me of the way humans turn when they feel my breath
against them and know suddenly that where they thought
themselves to be utterly alone…that moment of awful suspicion
before they see my face and gasp. He was looking at me now, and
I could barely see his lips moving. And then I sensed it. He was
afraid. Lestat afraid.
“And she was staring at him with the same level gaze, evincing
no emotion, no thought.
“ ‘You infected her with this…’ he whispered.
“He struck a match now with a sharp crackle and lit the mantel
candles, lifted the smoky shades of the lamps, went around the
room making light, until Claudia’s small frame took on a solidity
and he stood with his back to the marble mantel looking from
light to light as if they restored some peace. ‘I’m going out,’ he
said.
“She rose the instant he had reached the street, and suddenly
she stopped in the center of the room and stretched, her tiny back
arched, her arms straight up into small sts, her eyes squeezed
shut for a moment and then wide open as if she were waking to
the room from a dream. There was something obscene about her
gesture; the room seemed to shimmer with Lestat’s fear, echo with
his last response. It demanded her attention. I must have made
some involuntary movement to turn away from her, because she
was standing at the arm of my chair now and pressing her hand
at upon my book, a book I hadn’t been reading for hours. ‘Come
out with me.’
“ ‘You were right. He knows nothing. There is nothing he can
tell us,’ I said to her.
“ ‘Did you ever really think that he did?’ she asked me in that
same small voice. ‘We’ll nd others of our kind,’ she said. ‘We’ll
nd them in central Europe. That is where they live in such
numbers that the stories, both ction and fact, ll volumes. I’m
convinced it was from there that all vampires came, if they came
from any place at all. We’ve tarried too long with him. Come out.
Let the esh instruct the mind.’
“I think I felt a tremor of delight when she said these words, Let
the esh instruct the mind. ‘Put books aside and kill,’ she was
whispering to me. I followed her down the stairs, across the
courtyard and down a narrow alley to another street. Then she
turned with outstretched arms for me to pick her up and carry
her, though, of course, she was not tired; she wanted only to be
near my ear, to clutch my neck. ‘I haven’t told him my plan,
about the voyage, the money,’ I was saying to her, conscious of
something about her that was beyond me as she rode my
measured steps, weightless in my arms.
“ ‘He killed the other vampire,’ she said.
“ ‘No, why do you say this?’ I asked her. But it wasn’t the saying
of it that disturbed me, stirred my soul as if it were a pool of
water longing to be still. I felt as if she were moving me slowly
towards something, as if she were the pilot of our slow walk
through the dark street. ‘Because I know it now,’ she said with
authority. ‘The vampire made a slave of him, and he would no
more be a slave than I would be a slave, and so he killed him.
Killed him before he knew what he might know, and then in panic
made a slave of you. And you’ve been his slave.’
“ ‘Never really…’ I whispered to her. I felt the press of her
cheek against my temple. She was cold and needed the kill. ‘Not a
slave. Just some sort of mindless accomplice,’ I confessed to her,
confessed to myself. I could feel the fever for the kill rising in me,
a knot of hunger in my insides, a throbbing in the temples, as if
the veins were contracting and my body might become a map of
tortured vessels.
“ ‘No, slave,’ she persisted in her grave monotone, as though
thinking aloud, the words revelations, pieces of a puzzle. ‘And I
shall free us both.’
“I stopped. Her hand pressed me, urged me on. We were
walking down the long wide alley beside the cathedral, towards
the lights of Jackson Square, the water rushing fast in the gutter
down the center of the alley, silver in the moonlight. She said, ‘I
will kill him.’
“I stood still at the end of the alley. I felt her shift in my arm,
move down as if she could accomplish being free of me without
the awkward aid of my hands. I set her on the stone sidewalk. I
said no to her, I shook my head. I had that feeling then which I
described before, that the buildings around me—the Cabildo, the
cathedral, the apartments along the square—all this was silk and
illusion and would ripple suddenly in a horric wind, and a
chasm would open in the earth that was the reality. ‘Claudia,’ I
gasped, turning away from her.
“ ‘And why not kill him!’ she said now, her voice rising, silvery
and nally shrill. ‘I have no use for him! I can get nothing from
him! And he causes me pain, which I will not abide!’
“ ‘And if he had so little use for us!’ I said to her. But the
vehemence was false. Hopeless. She was at a distance from me
now, small shoulders straight and determined, her pace rapid, like
a little girl who, walking out on Sundays with her parents, wants
to walk ahead and pretend she is all alone. ‘Claudia!’ I called after
her, catching up with her in a stride. I reached for the small waist
and felt her stien as if she had become iron. ‘Claudia, you cannot
kill him!’ I whispered. She moved backwards, skipping, clicking
on the stones, and moved out into the open street. A cabriolet
rolled past us with a sudden surge of laughter and the clatter of
horses and wooden wheels. The street was suddenly silent. I
reached out for her and moved forward over an immense space
and found her standing at the gate of Jackson Square, hands
gripping the wrought-iron bars. I drew down close to her. ‘I don’t
care what you feel, what you say, you cannot mean to kill him,’ I
said to her.
“ ‘And why not? Do you think him so strong!’ she said, her eyes
on the statue in the square, two immense pools of light.
“ ‘He is stronger than you know! Stronger than you dream! How
do you mean to kill him? You can’t measure his skill. You don’t
know!’ I pleaded with her but could see her utterly unmoved, like
a child staring in fascination through the window of a toy shop.
Her tongue moved suddenly between her teeth and touched her
lower lip in a strange icker that sent a mild shock through my
body. I tasted blood. I felt something palpable and helpless in my
hands. I wanted to kill. I could smell and hear humans on the
paths of the square, moving about the market, along the levee. I
was about to take her, make her look at me, shake her if I had to,
to make her listen, when she turned to me with her great liquid
eyes. ‘I love you, Louis,’ she said.
“ ‘Then listen to me, Claudia, I beg you,’ I whispered, holding
her, pricked suddenly by a nearby collection of whispers, the
slow, rising articulation of human speech over the mingled sounds
of the night. ‘He’ll destroy you if you try to kill him. There is no
way you can do such a thing for sure. You don’t know how. And
pitting yourself against him you’ll lose everything. Claudia, I can’t
bear this.’
“There was a barely perceptible smile on her lips. ‘No, Louis,’
she whispered. ‘I can kill him. And I want to tell you something
else now, a secret between you and me.’
“I shook my head but she pressed even closer to me, lowering
her lids so that her rich lashes almost brushed the roundness of
her cheeks. ‘The secret is, Louis, that I want to kill him. I will
enjoy it!’
“I knelt beside her, speechless, her eyes studying me as they’d
done so often in the past; and then she said, ‘I kill humans every
night. I seduce them, draw them close to me, with an insatiable
hunger, a constant never-ending search for something…
something, I don’t know what it is…’ She brought her ngers to
her lips now and pressed her lips, her mouth partly open so I
could see the gleam of her teeth. ‘And I care nothing about them
—where they came from, where they would go—if I did not meet
them on the way. But I dislike him! I want him dead and will have
him dead. I shall enjoy it.’
“ ‘But Claudia, he is not mortal. He’s immortal. No illness can
touch him. Age has no power over him. You threaten a life which
might endure to the end of the world!’
“ ‘Ah, yes, that’s it, precisely!’ she said with reverential awe. ‘A
lifetime that might have endured for centuries. Such blood, such
power. Do you think I’ll possess his power and my own power
when I take him?’
“I was enraged now. I rose suddenly and turned away from her.
I could hear the whispering of humans near me. They were
whispering of the father and the daughter, of some frequent sight
of loving devotion. I realized they were talking of us.
“ ‘It’s not necessary,’ I said to her. ‘It goes beyond all need, all
common sense, all…’
“ ‘What! Humanity? He’s a killer!’ she hissed. ‘Lone predator!’
She repeated his own term, mocking it. ‘Don’t interfere with me
or seek to know the time I choose to do it, nor try to come
between us….’ She raised her hand now to hush me and caught
mine in an iron grasp, her tiny ngers biting into my tight,
tortured esh. ‘If you do, you will bring me destruction by your
interference. I can’t be discouraged.’
“She was gone then in a urry of bonnet ribbons and clicking
slippers. I turned, paying no attention to where I went, wishing
the city would swallow me, conscious now of the hunger rising to
overtake reason. I was almost loath to put an end to it. I needed
to let the lust, the excitement blot out all consciousness, and I
thought of the kill over and over and over, walking slowly up this
street and down the next, moving inexorably towards it, saying,
‘It’s a string which is pulling me through the labyrinth. I am not
pulling the string. The string is pulling me….’ And then I stood in
the Rue Conti listening to a dull thundering, a familiar sound. It
was the fencers above in the salon, advancing on the hollow
wooden oor, forward, back again, scuttling, and the silver
zinging of the foils. I stood back against the wall, where I could
see them through the high naked windows, the young men
duelling late into the night, left arm poised like the arm of a
dancer, grace advancing towards death, grace thrusting for the
heart, images of the young Freniere now driving the silver blade
forward, now being pulled by it towards hell. Someone had come
down the narrow wooden steps to the street—a young boy, a boy
so young he had the smooth, plump cheeks of a child; his face
was pink and ushed from the fencing, and beneath his smart
gray coat and rued shirt there was the sweet smell of cologne
and salt. I could feel his heat as he emerged from the dim light of
the stairwell. He was laughing to himself, talking almost inaudibly
to himself, his brown hair falling down over his eyes as he went
along, shaking his head, the whispers rising, then falling o. And
then he stopped short, his eyes on me. He stared, and his eyelids
quivered and he laughed quickly, nervously. ‘Excuse me!’ he said
now in French. ‘You gave me a start!’ And then, just as he moved
to make a ceremonial bow and perhaps go around me, he stood
still, and the shock spread over his ushed face. I could see the
heart beating in the pink esh of his cheeks, smell the sudden
sweat of his young, taut body.
“ ‘You saw me in the lamplight,’ I said to him. ‘And my face
looked to you like the mask of death.’
“His lips parted and his teeth touched and involuntarily he
nodded, his eyes dazed.
“ ‘Pass by!’ I said to him. ‘Fast!’ ”
The vampire paused, then moved as if he meant to go on. But he
stretched his long legs under the table and, leaning back, pressed
his hands to his head as if exerting a great pressure on his
temples.
The boy, who had drawn himself up into a crouched position,
his hands hugging his arms, unwound slowly. He glanced at the
tapes and then back at the vampire. “But you killed someone that
night,” he said.
“Every night,” said the vampire.
“Why did you let him go then?” asked the boy.
“I don’t know,” said the vampire, but it did not have the tone of
truly I don’t know, but rather, let it be. “You look tired,” said the
vampire. “You look cold.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the boy quickly. “The room’s a little
cold; I don’t care about that. You’re not cold, are you?”
“No.” The vampire smiled and then his shoulders moved with
silent laughter.
A moment passed in which the vampire seemed to be thinking
and the boy to be studying the vampire’s face. The vampire’s eyes
moved to the boy’s watch.
“She didn’t succeed, did she?” the boy asked softly.
“What do you honestly think?” asked the vampire. He had
settled back in his chair. He looked at the boy intently.
“That she was…as you said, destroyed,” said the boy; and he
seemed to feel the words, so that he swallowed after he’d said the
word destroyed. “Was she?” he asked.
“Don’t you think that she could do it?” asked the vampire.
“But he was so powerful. You said yourself you never knew
what powers he had, what secrets he knew. How could she even
be sure how to kill him? How did she try?”
The vampire looked at the boy for a long time, his expression
unreadable to the boy, who found himself looking away, as
though the vampire’s eyes were burning lights. “Why don’t you
drink from that bottle in your pocket?” asked the vampire. “It will
make you warm.”
“Oh, that…” said the boy. “I was going to. I just.…”
The vampire laughed. “You didn’t think it was polite!” he said,
and he suddenly slapped his thigh.
“That’s true,” the boy shrugged, smiling now; and he took the
small ask out of his jacket pocket, unscrewed the gold cap, and
took a sip. He held the bottle, now looking at the vampire.
“No,” the vampire smiled and raised his hand to wave away the
oer.
Then his face became serious again and, sitting back, he went
on.
“Lestat had a musician friend in the Rue Dumaine. We had seen
him at a recital in the home of a Madame LeClair, who lived there
also, which was at that time an extremely fashionable street; and
this Madame LeClair, with whom Lestat was also occasionally
amusing himself, had found the musician a room in another
mansion nearby, where Lestat visited him often. I told you he
played with his victims, made friends with them, seduced them
into trusting and liking him, even loving him, before he killed. So
he apparently played with this young boy, though it had gone on
longer than any other such friendship I had ever observed. The
young boy wrote good music, and often Lestat brought fresh
sheets of it home and played the songs on the square grand in our
parlor. The boy had a great talent, but you could tell that this
music would not sell, because it was too disturbing. Lestat gave
him money and spent evening after evening with him, often
taking him to restaurants the boy could have never aorded, and
he bought him all the paper and pens which he needed for the
writing of his music.
“As I said, it had gone on far longer than any such friendship
Lestat had ever had. And I could not tell whether he had actually
become fond of a mortal in spite of himself or was simply moving
towards a particularly grand betrayal and cruelty. Several times
he’d indicated to Claudia and me that he was headed out to kill
the boy directly, but he had not. And, of course, I never asked him
what he felt because it wasn’t worth the great uproar my question
would have produced. Lestat entranced with a mortal! He
probably would have destroyed the parlor furniture in a rage.
“The next night—after that which I just described to you—he
jarred me miserably by asking me to go with him to the boy’s at.
He was positively friendly, in one of those moods when he wanted
my companionship. Enjoyment could bring that out of him.
Wanting to see a good play, the regular opera, the ballet. He
always wanted me along. I think I must have seen Macbeth with
him fteen times. We went to every performance, even those by
amateurs, and Lestat would stride home afterwards, repeating the
lines to me and even shouting out to passers-by with an
outstretched nger, ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!’
until they skirted him as if he were drunk. But this eervescence
was frenetic and likely to vanish in an instant; just a word or two
of amiable feeling on my part, some suggestion that I found his
companionship pleasant, could banish all such aairs for months.
Even years. But now he came to me in such a mood and asked me
to go to the boy’s room. He was not above pressing my arm as he
urged me. And I, dull, catatonic, gave him some miserable excuse
—thinking only of Claudia, of the agent, of imminent disaster. I
could feel it and wondered that he did not feel it. And nally he
picked up a book from the oor and threw it at me, shouting,
‘Read your damn poems, then! Rot!’ And he bounded out.
“This disturbed me. I cannot tell you how it disturbed me. I
wished him cold, impassive, gone. I resolved to plead with
Claudia to drop this. I felt powerless, and hopelessly fatigued. But
her door had been locked until she left, and I had glimpsed her
only for a second while Lestat was chattering, a vision of lace and
loveliness as she slipped on her coat; pued sleeves again and a
violet ribbon on her breast, her white lace stockings showing
beneath the hem of the little gown, and her white slippers
immaculate. She cast a cold look at me as she went out.
“When I returned later, satiated and for a while too sluggish for
my own thoughts to bother me, I gradually began to sense that
this was the night. She would try tonight.
“I cannot tell you how I knew this. Things about the at
disturbed me, alerted me. Claudia moved in the back parlor
behind closed doors. And I fancied I heard another voice there, a
whisper. Claudia never brought anyone to our at; no one did
except Lestat, who brought his women of the streets. But I knew
there was someone there, yet I got no strong scent, no proper
sounds. And then there were aromas in the air of food and drink.
And chrysanthemums stood in the silver vase on the square grand
—owers which, to Claudia, meant death.
“Then Lestat came, singing something soft under his breath, his
walking stick making a rat-tat-tat on the rails of the spiral stairs.
He came down the long hall, his face ushed from the kill, his lips
pink; and he set his music on the piano. ‘Did I kill him or did I not
kill him!’ He ashed the question at me now with a pointing
nger. ‘What’s your guess?’
“ ‘You did not,’ I said numbly. ‘Because you invited me to go
with you, and would never have invited me to share that kill.’
“ ‘Ah, but! Did I kill him in a rage because you would not go
with me!’ he said and threw back the cover from the keys. I could
see that he would be able to go on like this until dawn. He was
exhilarated. I watched him ip through the music, thinking, Can
he die? Can he actually die? And does she mean to do this? At one
point, I wanted to go to her and tell her we must abandon
everything, even the proposed trip, and live as we had before. But
I had the feeling now that there was no retreat. Since the day
she’d begun to question him, this—whatever it was to be—was
inevitable. And I felt a weight on me, holding me in the chair.
“He pressed two chords with his hands. He had an immense
reach and even in life could have been a ne pianist. But he
played without feeling; he was always outside the music, drawing
it out of the piano as if by magic, by the virtuosity of his vampire
senses and control; the music did not come through him, was not
drawn through him by himself. ‘Well, did I kill him?’ he asked me
again.
“ ‘No, you did not,’ I said again, though I could just as easily
have said the opposite. I was concentrating on keeping my face a
mask.
“ ‘You’re right. I did not,’ he said. ‘It excites me to be close to
him, to think over and over, I can kill him and I will kill him but
not now. And then to leave him and nd someone who looks as
nearly like him as possible. If he had brothers…why, I’d kill them
one by one. The family would succumb to a mysterious fever
which dried up the very blood in their bodies!’ he said, now
mocking a barker’s tone. ‘Claudia has a taste for families.
Speaking of families, I suppose you heard. The Freniere place is
supposed to be haunted; they can’t keep an overseer and the
slaves run away.’
“This was something I did not wish to hear in particular.
Babette had died young, insane, restrained nally from wandering
towards the ruins of Pointe du Lac, insisting she had seen the
devil there and must nd him; I’d heard of it in wisps of gossip.
And then came the funeral notices. I’d thought occasionally of
going to her, of trying some way to rectify what I had done; and
other times I thought it would all heal itself; and in my new life of
nightly killing, I had grown far from the attachment I’d felt for
her or for my sister or any mortal. And I watched the tragedy
nally as one might from a theater balcony, moved from time to
time, but never suciently to jump the railing and join the
players on the stage.
“ ‘Don’t talk of her,’ I said.
“ ‘Very well. I was talking of the plantation. Not her. Her! Your
lady love, your fancy.’ He smiled at me. ‘You know, I had it all my
way nally in the end, didn’t I? But I was telling you about my
young friend and how…’
“ ‘I wish you would play the music,’ I said softly, unobtrusively,
but as persuasively as possible. Sometimes this worked with
Lestat. If I said something just right he found himself doing what
I’d said. And now he did just that: with a little snarl, as if to say,
‘You fool,’ he began playing the music. I heard the doors of the
back parlor open and Claudia’s steps move down the hall. Don’t
come, Claudia, I was thinking, feeling; go away from it before
we’re all destroyed. But she came on steadily until she reached
the hall mirror. I could hear her opening the small table drawer,
and then the zinging of her hairbrush. She was wearing a oral
perfume. I turned slowly to face her as she appeared in the door,
still all in white, and moved across the carpet silently towards the
piano. She stood at the end of the keyboard, her hands folded on
the wood, her chin resting on her hands, her eyes xed on Lestat.
“I could see his prole and her small face beyond, looking up at
him. ‘What is it now!’ he said, turning the page and letting his
hand drop to his thigh. ‘You irritate me. Your very presence
irritates me!’ His eyes moved over the page.
“ ‘Does it?’ she said in her sweetest voice.
“ ‘Yes, it does. And I’ll tell you something else. I’ve met
someone who would make a better vampire than you do.’
“This stunned me. But I didn’t have to urge him to go on. ‘Do
you get my meaning?’ he said to her.
“ ‘Is it supposed to frighten me?’ she asked.
“ ‘You’re spoiled because you’re an only child,’ he said. ‘You
need a brother. Or rather, I need a brother. I get weary of you
both. Greedy, brooding vampires that haunt our own lives. I
dislike it.’
“ ‘I suppose we could people the world with vampires, the three
of us,’ she said.
“ ‘You think so!’ he said, smiling, his voice with a note of
triumph. ‘Do you think you could do it? I suppose Louis has told
you how it was done or how he thinks it was done. You don’t
have the power. Either of you,’ he said.
“This seemed to disturb her. Something she had not accounted
for. She was studying him. I could see she did not entirely believe
him.
“ ‘And what gave you the power?’ she asked softly, but with a
touch of sarcasm.
“ ‘That, my dear, is one of those things which you may never
know. For even the Erebus in which we live must have its
aristocracy.’
“ ‘You’re a liar,’ she said with a short laugh. And just as he
touched his ngers to the keys again, she said, ‘But you upset my
plans.’
“ ‘Your plans?’ he asked.
“ ‘I came to make peace with you, even if you are the father of
lies. You’re my father,’ she said. ‘I want to make peace with you. I
want things to be as they were.’
“Now he was the one who did not believe. He threw a glance at
me, then looked at her. ‘That can be. Just stop asking me
questions. Stop following me. Stop searching in every alleyway
for other vampires. There are no other vampires! And this is
where you live and this is where you stay!’ He looked confused
for the moment, as if raising his own voice had confused him. ‘I
take care of you. You don’t need anything.’
“ ‘And you don’t know anything, and that is why you detest my
questions. All that’s clear. So now let’s have peace, because there’s
nothing else to be had. I have a present for you.’
“ ‘And I hope it’s a beautiful woman with endowments you’ll
never possess,’ he said, looking her up and down. Her face
changed when he did this. It was as if she almost lost some
control I’d never seen her lose. But then she just shook her head
and reached out one small, rounded arm and tugged at his sleeve.
“ ‘I meant what I said. I’m weary of arguing with you. Hell is
hatred, people living together in eternal hatred. We’re not in hell.
You can take the present or not, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.
Only let’s have an end to all this. Before Louis, in disgust, leaves
us both.’ She was urging him now to leave the piano, bringing
down the wooden cover again over the keys, turning him on the
piano stool until his eyes followed her to the door.
“ ‘You’re serious. Present, what do you mean, present?’
“ ‘You haven’t fed enough, I can tell by your color, by your
eyes. You’ve never fed enough at this hour. Let’s say that I can
give you a precious moment. Suer the little children to come unto
me,’ she whispered, and was gone. He looked at me. I said
nothing. I might as well have been drugged. I could see the
curiosity in his face, the suspicion. He followed her down the hall.
And then I heard him let out a long, conscious moan, a perfect
mingling of hunger and lust.
“When I reached the door, and I took my time, he was bending
over the settee. Two small boys lay there, nestled among the soft
velvet pillows, totally abandoned to sleep as children can be, their
pink mouths open, their small round faces utterly smooth. Their
skin was moist, radiant, the curls of the darker of the two damp
and pressed to the forehead. I saw at once by their pitiful and
identical clothes that they were orphans. And they had ravaged a
meal set before them on our best china. The tablecloth was
stained with wine, and a small bottle stood half full among the
greasy plates and forks. But there was an aroma in the room I did
not like. I moved closer, better to see the sleeping ones, and I
could see their throats were bare but untouched. Lestat had sunk
down beside the darker one; he was by far the more beautiful. He
might have been lifted to the painted dome of a cathedral. No
more than seven years old, he had that perfect beauty that is of
neither sex, but angelic. Lestat brought his hand down gently on
the pale throat, and then he touched the silken lips. He let out a
sigh which had again that longing, that sweet, painful
anticipation. ‘Oh…Claudia…’ he sighed. ‘You’ve outdone yourself.
Where did you nd them?’
“She said nothing. She had receded to a dark armchair and sat
back against two large pillows, her legs out straight on the
rounded cushion, her ankles drooping so that you did not see the
bottom of her white slippers but the curved insteps and the tight,
delicate little straps. She was staring at Lestat. ‘Drunk on brandy
wine,’ she said. ‘A thimbleful!’ and gestured to the table. ‘I
thought of you when I saw them…I thought if I share this with
him, even he will forgive.’
“He was warmed by her attery. He looked at her now and
reached out and clutched her white lace ankle. ‘Ducky!’ he
whispered to her and laughed, but then he hushed, as if he didn’t
wish to wake the doomed children. He gestured to her, intimately,
seductively, ‘Come sit beside him. You take him, and I’ll take this
one. Come.’ He embraced her as she passed and nestled beside the
other boy. He stroked the boy’s moist hair, he ran his ngers over
the rounded lids and along the fringe of lashes. And then he put
his whole softened hand across the boy’s face and felt at the
temples, cheeks, and jaw, massaging the unblemished esh. He
had forgotten I was there or she was there, but he withdrew his
hand and sat still for a moment, as though his desire was making
him dizzy. He glanced at the ceiling and then down at the perfect
feast. He turned the boy’s head slowly against the back of the
couch, and the boy’s eyebrows tensed for an instant and a moan
escaped his lips.
“Claudia’s eyes were steady on Lestat, though now she raised
her left hand and slowly undid the buttons of the child who lay
beside her and reached inside the shabby little shirt and felt the
bare esh. Lestat did the same, but suddenly it was as if his hand
had life itself and drew his arm into the shirt and around the
boy’s small chest in a tight embrace; and Lestat slid down o the
cushions of the couch to his knees on the oor, his arm locked to
the boy’s body, pulling it up close to him so that his face was
buried in the boy’s neck. His lips moved over the neck and over
the chest and over the tiny nipple of the chest and then, putting
his other arm into the open shirt, so that the boy lay hopelessly
wound in both arms, he drew the boy up tight and sank his teeth
into his throat. The boy’s head fell back, the curls loose as he was
lifted, and again he let out a small moan and his eyelids uttered
—but never opened. And Lestat knelt, the boy pressed against
him, sucking hard, his own back arched and rigid, his body
rocking back and forth carrying the boy, his long moans rising
and falling in time with the slow rocking, until suddenly his
whole body tensed, and his hands seemed to grope for some way
to push the boy away, as if the boy himself in his helpless slumber
were clinging to Lestat; and nally he embraced the boy again
and moved slowly forward over him, letting him down among the
pillows, the sucking softer, now almost inaudible.
“He withdrew. His hands pressed the boy down. He knelt there,
his head thrown back, so the wavy blond hair hung loose and
dishevelled. And then he slowly sank to the oor, turning, his
back against the leg of the couch. ‘Ah…God…’ he whispered, his
head back, his lids half-mast. I could see the color rushing to his
cheeks, rushing into his hands. One hand lay on his bent knee,
uttering, and then it lay still.
“Claudia had not moved. She lay like a Botticelli angel beside
the unharmed boy. The other’s body already withered, the neck
like a fractured stem, the heavy head falling now at an odd angle,
the angle of death, into the pillow.
“But something was wrong. Lestat was staring at the ceiling. I
could see his tongue between his teeth. He lay too still, the
tongue, as it were, trying to get out of the mouth, trying to move
past the barrier of the teeth and touch the lip. He appeared to
shiver, his shoulders convulsing…then relaxing heavily; yet he did
not move. A veil had fallen over his clear gray eyes. He was
peering at the ceiling. Then a sound came out of him. I stepped
forward from the shadows of the hallway, but Claudia said in a
sharp hiss, ‘Go back!’
“ ‘Louis…’ he was saying. I could hear it now…‘Louis…Louis.…’
“ ‘Don’t you like it, Lestat?’ she asked him.
“ ‘Something’s wrong with it,’ he gasped, and his eyes widened
as if the mere speaking were a colossal eort. He could not move.
I saw it. He could not move at all. ‘Claudia!’ He gasped again, and
his eyes rolled towards her.
“ ‘Don’t you like the taste of children’s blood…?’ she asked
softly.
“ ‘Louis…’ he whispered, nally lifting his head just for an
instant. It fell back on the couch. ‘Louis, it’s…it’s absinthe! Too
much absinthe!’ he gasped. ‘She’s poisoned them with it. She’s
poisoned me. Louis….’ He tried to raise his hand. I drew nearer,
the table between us.
“ ‘Stay back!’ she said again. And now she slid o the couch and
approached him, peering down into his face as he had peered at
the child. ‘Absinthe, Father,’ she said, ‘and laudanum!’
“ ‘Demon!’ he said to her. ‘Louis…put me in my con.’ He
struggled to rise. ‘Put me in my con!’ His voice was hoarse,
barely audible. The hand uttered, lifted, and fell back.
“ ‘I’ll put you in your con, Father,’ she said, as though she
were soothing him. ‘I’ll put you in it forever.’ And then, from
beneath the pillows of the couch, she drew a kitchen knife.
“ ‘Claudia! Don’t do this thing!’ I said to her. But she ashed at
me a virulency I’d never seen in her face, and as I stood there
paralyzed, she gashed his throat, and he let out a sharp, choking
cry. ‘God!’ he shouted out. ‘God!’
“The blood poured out of him, down his shirt front, down his
coat. It poured as it might never pour from a human being, all the
blood with which he had lled himself before the child and from
the child; and he kept turning his head, twisting, making the
bubbling gash gape. She sank the knife into his chest now and he
pitched forward, his mouth wide, his fangs exposed, both hands
convulsively ying towards the knife, uttering around its handle,
slipping o its handle. He looked up at me, the hair falling down
into his eyes. ‘Louis! Louis!’ He let out one more gasp and fell
sideways on the carpet. She stood looking down at him. The blood
owed everywhere like water. He was groaning, trying to raise
himself, one arm pinned beneath his chest, the other shoving at
the oor. And now, suddenly, she ew at him and clamping both
arms about his neck, bit deep into him as he struggled. ‘Louis,
Louis!’ he gasped over and over, struggling, trying desperately to
throw her o; but she rode him, her body lifted by his shoulder,
hoisted and dropped, hoisted and dropped, until she pulled away;
and, nding the oor quickly, she backed away from him, her
hands to her lips, her eyes for the moment clouded, then clear. I
turned away from her, my body convulsed by what I’d seen,
unable to look any longer. ‘Louis!’ she said; but I only shook my
head. For a moment, the whole house seemed to sway. But she
said, ‘Look what’s happening to him!’
“He had ceased to move. He lay now on his back. And his entire
body was shrivelling, drying up, the skin thick and wrinkled, and
so white that all the tiny veins showed through it. I gasped, but I
could not take my eyes o it, even as the shape of the bones
began to show through, his lips drawing back from his teeth, the
esh of his nose drying to two gaping holes. But his eyes, they
remained the same, staring wildly at the ceiling, the irises dancing
from side to side, even as the esh cleaved to the bones, became
nothing but a parchment wrapping for the bones, the clothes
hollow and limp over the skeleton that remained. Finally the
irises rolled to the top of his head, and the whites of his eyes went
dim. The thing lay still. A great mass of wavy blond hair, a coat, a
pair of gleaming boots; and this horror that had been Lestat, and I
staring helplessly at it.”
···
“For a long time, Claudia merely stood there. Blood had soaked
the carpet, darkening the woven wreaths of owers. It gleamed
sticky and black on the oorboards. It stained her dress, her white
shoes, her cheek. She wiped at it with a crumpled napkin, took a
swipe at the impossible stains of the dress, and then she said,
‘Louis, you must help me get him out of here!’
“I said, ‘No!’ I’d turned my back on her, on the corpse at her
feet.
“ ‘Are you mad, Louis? It can’t remain here!’ she said to me.
‘And the boys. You must help me! The other one’s dead from the
absinthe! Louis!’
“I knew that this was true, necessary; and yet it seemed
impossible.
“She had to prod me then, almost lead me every step of the
way. We found the kitchen stove still heaped with the bones of
the mother and daughter she’d killed—a dangerous blunder, a
stupidity. So she scraped them out now into a sack and dragged
the sack across the courtyard stones to the carriage. I hitched the
horse myself, shushing the groggy coachman, and drove the
hearse out of the city, fast in the direction of the Bayou St. Jean,
towards the dark swamp that stretched to Lake Pontchartrain. She
sat beside me, silent, as we rode on and on until we’d passed the
gas-lit gates of the few country houses, and the shell road
narrowed and became rutted, the swamp rising on either side of
us, a great wall of seemingly impenetrable cypress and vine. I
could smell the stench of the muck, hear the rustling of the
animals.
“Claudia had wrapped Lestat’s body in a sheet before I would
even touch it, and then, to my horror, she had sprinkled it over
with the long-stemmed chrysanthemums. So it had a sweet,
funereal smell as I lifted it last of all from the carriage. It was
almost weightless, as limp as something made of knots and cords,
as I put it over my shoulder and moved down into the dark water,
the water rising and lling my boots, my feet seeking some path
in the ooze beneath, away from where I’d laid the two boys. I
went deeper and deeper in with Lestat’s remains, though why, I
did not know. And nally, when I could barely see the pale space
of the road and the sky which was coming dangerously close to
dawn, I let his body slip down out of my arms into the water. I
stood there shaken, looking at the amorphous form of the white
sheet beneath the slimy surface. The numbness which had
protected me since the carriage left the Rue Royale threatened to
lift and leave me ayed suddenly, staring, thinking: This is Lestat.
This is all of transformation and mystery, dead, gone into eternal
darkness. I felt a pull suddenly, as if some force were urging me to
go down with him, to descend into the dark water and never
come back. It was so distinct and so strong that it made the
articulation of voices seem only a murmur by comparison. It
spoke without language, saying, ‘You know what you must do.
Come down into the darkness. Let it all go away.’
“But at that moment I heard Claudia’s voice. She was calling
my name. I turned, and, through the tangled vines, I saw her
distant and tiny, like a white ame on the faint luminescent shell
road.
“That morning, she wound her arms around me, pressed her
head against my chest in the closeness of the con, whispering
she loved me, that we were free now of Lestat forever. ‘I love you,
Louis,’ she said over and over as the darkness nally came down
with the lid and mercifully blotted out all consciousness.
“When I awoke, she was going through his things. It was a
tirade, silent, controlled, but lled with a erce anger. She pulled
the contents from cabinets, emptied drawers onto the carpets,
pulled one jacket after another from his armoires, turning the
pockets inside out, throwing the coins and theater tickets and bits
and pieces of paper away. I stood in the door of his room,
astonished, watching her. His con lay there, heaped with
scarves and pieces of tapestry. I had the compulsion to open it. I
had the wish to see him there. ‘Nothing!’ she nally said in
disgust. She wadded the clothes into the grate. ‘Not a hint of
where he came from, who made him!’ she said. ‘Not a scrap.’ She
looked to me as if for sympathy. I turned away from her. I was
unable to look at her. I moved back into that bedroom which I
kept for myself, that room lled with my own books and what
things I’d saved from my mother and sister, and I sat on the bed. I
could hear her at the door, but I would not look at her. ‘He
deserved to die!’ she said to me.
“ ‘Then we deserve to die. The same way. Every night of our
lives,’ I said back to her. ‘Go away from me.’ It was as if my words
were my thoughts, my mind alone only formless confusion. ‘I’ll
care for you because you can’t care for yourself. But I don’t want
you near me. Sleep in that box you bought for yourself. Don’t
come near me.’
“ ‘I told you I was going to do it. I told you…’ she said. Never
had her voice sounded so fragile, so like a little silvery bell. I
looked up at her, startled but unshaken. Her face seemed not her
face. Never had anyone shaped such agitation into the features of
a doll. ‘Louis, I told you!’ she said, her lips quivering. ‘I did it for
us. So we could be free.’ I couldn’t stand the sight of her. Her
beauty, her seeming innocence, and this terrible agitation. I went
past her, perhaps knocking her backwards, I don’t know. And I
was almost to the railing of the steps when I heard a strange
sound.
“Never in all the years of our life together had I heard this
sound. Never since the night long ago when I had rst found her,
a mortal child, clinging to her mother. She was crying!
“It drew me back now against my will. Yet it sounded so
unconscious, so hopeless, as though she meant no one to hear it,
or didn’t care if it were heard by the whole world. I found her
lying on my bed in the place where I often sat to read, her knees
drawn up, her whole frame shaking with her sobs. The sound of it
was terrible. It was more heartfelt, more awful than her mortal
crying had ever been. I sat down slowly, gently, beside her and
put my hand on her shoulder. She lifted her head, startled, her
eyes wide, her mouth trembling. Her face was stained with tears,
tears that were tinted with blood. Her eyes brimmed with them,
and the faint touch of red stained her tiny hand. She didn’t seem
to be conscious of this, to see it. She pushed her hair back from
her forehead. Her body quivered then with a long, low, pleading
sob. ‘Louis…if I lose you, I have nothing,’ she whispered. ‘I would
undo it to have you back. I can’t undo what I’ve done.’ She put
her arms around me, climbing up against me, sobbing against my
heart. My hands were reluctant to touch her; and then they
moved as if I couldn’t stop them, to enfold her and hold her and
stroke her hair. ‘I can’t live without you…’ she whispered. ‘I
would die rather than live without you. I would die the same way
he died. I can’t bear you to look at me the way you did. I cannot
bear it if you do not love me!’ Her sobs grew worse, more bitter,
until nally I bent and kissed her soft neck and cheeks. Winter
plums. Plums from an enchanted wood where the fruit never falls
from the boughs. Where the owers never wither and die. ‘All
right, my dear…’ I said to her. ‘All right, my love…’ And I rocked
her slowly, gently in my arms, until she dozed, murmuring
something about our being eternally happy, free of Lestat forever,
beginning the great adventure of our lives.”
“The great adventure of our lives. What does it mean to die when
you can live until the end of the world? And what is ‘the end of
the world’ except a phrase, because who knows even what is the
world itself? I had now lived in two centuries, seen the illusions of
one utterly shattered by the other, been eternally young and
eternally ancient, possessing no illusions, living moment to
moment in a way that made me picture a silver clock ticking in a
void: the painted face, the delicately carved hands looked upon by
no one, looking out at no one, illuminated by a light which was
not a light, like the light by which God made the world before He
had made light. Ticking, ticking, ticking, the precision of the
clock, in a room as vast as the universe.
“I was walking the streets again, Claudia gone her way to kill,
the perfume of her hair and dress lingering on my ngertips, on
my coat, my eyes moving far ahead of me like the pale beam of a
lantern. I found myself at the cathedral. What does it mean to die
when you can live until the end of the world? I was thinking of
my brother’s death, of the incense and the rosary. I had the desire
suddenly to be in that funeral room, listening to the sound of the
women’s voices rising and falling with the Aves, the clicking of
the beads, the smell of the wax. I could remember the crying. It
was palpable, as if it were just yesterday, just behind a door. I saw
myself walking fast down a corridor and gently giving the door a
shove.
“The great facade of the cathedral rose in a dark mass opposite
the square, but the doors were open and I could see a soft,
ickering light within. It was Saturday evening early, and the
people were going to confession for Sunday Mass and
Communion. Candles burned dim in the chandeliers. At the far
end of the nave the altar loomed out of the shadows, laden with
white owers. It was to the old church on this spot that they had
brought my brother for the nal service before the cemetery. And
I realized suddenly that I hadn’t been in this place since, never
once come up the stone steps, crossed the porch, and passed
through the open doors.
“I had no fear. If anything, perhaps, I longed for something to
happen, for the stones to tremble as I entered the shadowy foyer
and saw the distant tabernacle on the altar. I remembered now
that I had passed here once when the windows were ablaze and
the sound of singing poured out into Jackson Square. I had
hesitated then, wondering if there were some secret Lestat had
never told me, something which might destroy me were I to enter.
I’d felt compelled to enter, but I had pushed this out of my mind,
breaking loose from the fascination of the open doors, the throng
of people making one voice. I had had something for Claudia, a
doll I was taking to her, a bridal doll I’d lifted from a darkened
toy shop window and placed in a great box with ribbons and
tissue paper. A doll for Claudia. I remembered pressing on with it,
hearing the heavy vibrations of the organ behind me, my eyes
narrow from the great blaze of the candles.
“Now I thought of that moment; that fear in me at the very
sight of the altar, the sound of the Pange Lingua. And I thought
again, persistently, of my brother. I could see the con rolling
along up the center aisle, the procession of mourners behind it. I
felt no fear now. As I said, I think if anything I felt a longing for
some fear, for some reason for fear as I moved slowly along the
dark, stone walls. The air was chill and damp in spite of summer.
The thought of Claudia’s doll came back to me. Where was that
doll? For years Claudia had played with that doll. Suddenly I saw
myself searching for the doll, in the relentless and meaningless
manner one searches for something in a nightmare, coming on
doors that won’t open or drawers that won’t shut, struggling over
and over against the same meaningless thing, not knowing why
the eort seems so desperate, why the sudden sight of a chair
with a shawl thrown over it inspires the mind with horror.
“I was in the cathedral. A woman stepped out of the
confessional and passed the long line of those who waited. A man
who should have stepped up next did not move; and my eye,
sensitive even in my vulnerable condition, noted this, and I
turned to see him. He was staring at me. Quickly I turned my
back on him. I heard him enter the confessional and shut the
door. I walked up the aisle of the church and then, more from
exhaustion than from any conviction, went into an empty pew
and sat down. I had almost genuected from old habit. My mind
seemed as muddled and tortured as that of any human. I closed
my eyes for a moment and tried to banish all thoughts. Hear and
see, I said to myself. And with this act of will, my senses emerged
from the torment. All around me in the gloom I heard the whisper
of prayers, the tiny click of the rosary beads; soft the sighing of
the woman who knelt now at the Twelfth Station. Rising from the
sea of wooden pews came the scent of rats. A rat moving
somewhere near the altar, a rat in the great wood-carved side
altar of the Virgin Mary. The gold candlesticks shimmered on the
altar; a rich white chrysanthemum bent suddenly on its stem,
droplets glistening on the crowded petals, a sour fragrance rising
from a score of vases, from altars and side altars, from statues of
Virgins and Christs and saints. I stared at the statues; I became
obsessed suddenly and completely with the lifeless proles, the
staring eyes, the empty hands, the frozen folds. Then my body
convulsed with such violence that I found myself pitched forward,
my hand on the pew before me. It was a cemetery of dead forms,
of funereal egy and stone angels. I looked up and saw myself in
a most palpable vision ascending the altar steps, opening the tiny
sacrosanct tabernacle, reaching with monstrous hands for the
consecrated ciborium, and taking the Body of Christ and strewing
Its white wafers all over the carpet; and walking then on the
sacred wafers, walking up and down before the altar, giving Holy
Communion to the dust. I rose up now in the pew and stood there
staring at this vision. I knew full well the meaning of it.
“God did not live in this church; these statues gave an image to
nothingness, I was the supernatural in this cathedral. I was the
only supermortal thing that stood conscious under this roof!
Loneliness. Loneliness to the point of madness. The cathedral
crumbled in my vision; the saints listed and fell. Rats ate the Holy
Eucharist and nested on the sills. A solitary rat with an enormous
tail stood tugging and gnawing at the rotted altar cloth until the
candlesticks fell and rolled on the slime-covered stones. And I
remained standing. Untouched. Undead—reaching out suddenly
for the plaster hand of the Virgin and seeing it break in my hand,
so that I held the hand crumbling in my palm, the pressure of my
thumb turning it to powder.
“And then suddenly through the ruins, up through the open
door through which I could see a wasteland in all directions, even
the great river frozen over and stuck with the encrusted ruins of
ships, up through these ruins now came a funeral procession, a
band of pale, white men and women, monsters with gleaming
eyes and owing black clothes, the con rumbling on the
wooden wheels, the rats scurrying across the broken and buckling
marble, the procession advancing, so that I could see then Claudia
in the procession, her eyes staring from behind a thin black veil,
one gloved hand locked upon a black prayer book, the other on
the con as it moved beside her. And there now in the con,
beneath a glass cover, I saw to my horror the skeleton of Lestat,
the wrinkled skin now pressed into the very texture of his bones,
his eyes but sockets, his blond hair billowed on the white satin.
“The procession stopped. The mourners moved out, lling the
dusty pews without a sound, and Claudia, turning with her book,
opened it and lifted the veil back from her face, her eyes xed on
me as her nger touched the page. ‘And now art thou cursed from
the earth,’ she whispered, her whisper rising in echo in the ruins.
‘And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her
mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand. When thou
tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her
strength. A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth…
and whoever slayeth thee, vengeance shall be taken on him seven-
fold.’
“I shouted at her, I screamed, the scream rising up out of the
depths of my being like some great rolling black force that broke
from my lips and sent my body reeling against my will. A terrible
sighing rose from the mourners, a chorus growing louder and
louder as I turned to see them all about me, pushing me into the
aisle against the very sides of the con, so that I turned to get my
balance and found both my hands upon it. And I stood there
staring down not at the remains of Lestat, but at the body of my
mortal brother. A quiet descended, as if a veil had fallen over all
and made their forms dissolve beneath its soundless folds. There
was my brother, blond and young and sweet as he had been in
life, as real and warm to me now as he’d been years and years
beyond which I could never have remembered him thus, so
perfectly was he re-created, so perfectly in every detail. His blond
hair brushed back from his forehead, his eyes closed as if he slept,
his smooth ngers around the crucix on his breast, his lips so
pink and silken I could hardly bear to see them and not touch
them. And as I reached out just to touch the softness of his skin,
the vision ended.
“I was sitting still in the Saturday night cathedral, the smell of
the tapers thick in the motionless air, the woman of the stations
gone and darkness gathering—behind me, across from me, and
now above me. A boy appeared in the black cassock of a lay
brother, with a long extinguisher on a golden pole, putting its
little funnel down upon one candle and then another and then
another. I was stupeed. He glanced at me and then away, as if
not to disturb a man deep in prayer. And then, as he moved on up
to the next chandelier, I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“That two humans should pass this close to me without my
hearing, without my even caring, registered somewhere within
me that I was in danger, but I did not care. I looked up now and
saw a gray-haired priest. ‘You wish to go to confession?’ he asked.
‘I was about to lock up the church.’ He narrowed his eyes behind
his thick glasses. The only light now came from the racks of little
red-glass candles which burned before the saints; and shadows
leaped upon the towering walls. ‘You are troubled, aren’t you?
Can I help you?’
“ ‘It’s too late, too late,’ I whispered to him, and rose to go. He
backed away from me, still apparently unaware of anything about
my appearance that should alarm him, and said kindly, to
reassure me, ‘No, it’s still early. Do you want to come into the
confessional?’
“For a moment I just stared at him. I was tempted to smile. And
then it occurred to me to do it. But even as I followed him down
the aisle, in the shadows of the vestibule, I knew this would be
nothing, that it was madness. Nevertheless, I knelt down in the
small wooden booth, my hands folded on the priedieu as he sat in
the booth beside it and slid back the panel to show me the dim
outline of his prole. I stared at him for a moment. And then I
said it, lifting my hand to make the Sign of the Cross. ‘Bless me,
father, for I have sinned, sinned so often and so long I do not
know how to change, nor how to confess before God what I’ve
done.’
“ ‘Son, God is innite in His capacity to forgive,’ he whispered
to me. ‘Tell Him in the best way you know how and from your
heart.’
“ ‘Murders, father, death after death. The woman who died two
nights ago in Jackson Square, I killed her, and thousands of others
before her, one and two a night, father, for seventy years. I have
walked the streets of New Orleans like the Grim Reaper and fed
on human life for my own existence. I am not mortal, father, but
immortal and damned, like angels put in hell by God. I am a
vampire.’
“The priest turned. ‘What is this, some sort of sport for you?
Some joke? You take advantage of an old man!’ he said. He slid
the wooden panel back with a splat. Quickly I opened the door
and stepped out to see him standing there. ‘Young man, do you
fear God at all? Do you know the meaning of sacrilege?’ He glared
at me. Now I moved closer to him, slowly, very slowly, and at
rst he merely stared at me, outraged. Then, confused, he took a
step back. The church was hollow, empty, black, the sacristan
gone and the candles throwing ghastly light only on the distant
altars. They made a wreath of soft, gold bers about his gray head
and face. ‘Then there is no mercy!’ I said to him and suddenly
clamping my hands on his shoulders, I held him in a preternatural
lock from which he couldn’t hope to move and held him close
beneath my face. His mouth fell open in horror. ‘Do you see what
I am! Why, if God exists, does He suer me to exist!’ I said to him.
‘You talk of sacrilege!’ He dug his nails into my hands, trying to
free himself, his missal dropping to the oor, his rosary clattering
in the folds of his cassock. He might as well have fought the
animated statues of the saints. I drew my lips back and showed
him my virulent teeth. ‘Why does He suer me to live!’ I said. His
face infuriated me, his fear, his contempt, his rage. I saw in it all
the hatred I’d seen in Babette, and he hissed at me, ‘Let me go!
Devil!’ in sheer mortal panic.
“I released him, watching with a sinister fascination as he
oundered, moving up the center aisle as if he plowed through
snow. And then I was after him, so swift that I surrounded him in
an instant with my outstretched arms, my cape throwing him into
darkness, his legs scrambling still. He was cursing me, calling on
God at the altar. And then I grabbed him on the very steps to the
Communion rail and pulled him down to face me there and sank
my teeth into his neck.”
The vampire stopped.
Sometime before, the boy had been about to light a cigarette.
And he sat now with the match in one hand, the cigarette in the
other, still as a store dummy, staring at the vampire. The vampire
was looking at the oor. He turned suddenly, took the book of
matches from the boy’s hand, struck the match, and held it out.
The boy bent the cigarette to receive it. He inhaled and let the
smoke out quickly. He uncapped the bottle and took a deep drink,
his eyes always on the vampire.
He was patient again, waiting until the vampire was ready to
resume.
“I didn’t remember Europe from my childhood. Not even the
voyage to America, really. That I had been born there was an
abstract idea. Yet it had a hold over me which was as powerful as
the hold France can have on a colonial. I spoke French, read
French, remembered waiting for the reports of the Revolution and
reading the Paris newspaper accounts of Napoleon’s victories. I
remember the anger I felt when he sold the colony of Louisiana to
the United States. How long the mortal Frenchman lived in me I
don’t know. He was gone by this time, really, but there was in me
that great desire to see Europe and to know it, which comes not
only from the reading of all the literature and the philosophy, but
from the feeling of having been shaped by Europe more deeply
and keenly than the rest of Americans. I was a Creole who wanted
to see where it had all begun.
“And so I turned my mind to this now. To divesting my closets
and trunks of everything that was not essential to me. And very
little was essential to me, really. And much of that might remain
in the town house, to which I was certain I would return sooner
or later, if only to move my possessions to another similar one
and start a new life in New Orleans. I couldn’t conceive of leaving
it forever. Wouldn’t. But I xed my mind and heart on Europe.
“It began to penetrate for the rst time that I might see the
world if I wanted. That I was, as Claudia said, free.
“Meantime, she made a plan. It was her idea most denitely
that we must go rst to central Europe, where the vampire
seemed most prevalent. She was certain we could nd something
there that would instruct us, explain our origins. But she seemed
anxious for more than answers: a communion with her own kind.
She mentioned this over and over, ‘My own kind,’ and she said it
with a dierent intonation than I might have used. She made me
feel the gulf that separated us. In the rst years of our life
together, I had thought her like Lestat, imbibing his instinct to
kill, though she shared my tastes in everything else. Now I knew
her to be less human than either of us, less human than either of
us might have dreamed. Not the faintest conception bound her to
the sympathies of human existence. Perhaps this explained why—
despite everything I had done or failed to do—she clung to me. I
was not her own kind. Merely the closest thing to it.”
“But wouldn’t it have been possible,” asked the boy suddenly,
“to instruct her in the ways of the human heart the way you’d
instructed her in everything else?”
“To what avail?” asked the vampire frankly. “So she might
suer as I did? Oh, I’ll grant you I should have taught her
something to prevail against her desire to kill Lestat. For my own
sake, I should have done that. But you see, I had no condence in
anything else. Once fallen from grace, I had condence in
nothing.”
The boy nodded. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. You were
coming to something,” he said.
“Only to the point that it was possible to forget what had
happened to Lestat by turning my mind to Europe. And the
thought of the other vampires inspired me also. I had not been
cynical for one moment about the existence of God. Only lost
from it. Drifting, preternatural, through the natural world.
“But we had another matter before we left for Europe. Oh, a
great deal happened indeed. It began with the musician. He had
called while I was gone that evening to the cathedral, and the
next night he was to come again. I had dismissed the servants and
went down to him myself. And his appearance startled me at
once.
“He was much thinner than I’d remembered him and very pale,
with a moist gleam about his face that suggested fever. And he
was perfectly miserable. When I told him Lestat had gone away,
he refused at rst to believe me and began insisting Lestat would
have left him some message, something. And then he went o up
the Rue Royale, talking to himself about it, as if he had little
awareness of anyone around him. I caught up with him under a
gas lamp. ‘He did leave you something,’ I said, quickly feeling for
my wallet. I didn’t know how much I had in it, but I planned to
give it to him. It was several hundred dollars. I put it into his
hands. They were so thin I could see the blue veins pulsing
beneath the watery skin. Now he became exultant, and I sensed at
once that the matter went beyond the money. ‘Then he spoke of
me, he told you to give this to me!’ he said, holding onto it as
though it were a relic. ‘He must have said something else to you!’
He stared at me with bulging, tortured eyes. I didn’t answer him
at once, because during these moments I had seen the puncture
wounds in his neck. Two red scratch-like marks to the right, just
above his soiled collar. The money apped in his hand; he was
oblivious to the evening trac of the street, the people who
pushed close around us. ‘Put it away,’ I whispered. ‘He did speak
of you, that it was important you go on with your music.’
“He stared at me as if anticipating something else. ‘Yes? Did he
say anything else?’ he asked me. I didn’t know what to tell him. I
would have made up anything if it would have given him
comfort, and also kept him away. It was painful for me to speak of
Lestat; the words evaporated on my lips. And the puncture
wounds amazed me. I couldn’t fathom this. I was saying nonsense
to the boy nally—that Lestat wished him well, that he had to
take a steamboat up to St. Louis, that he would be back, that war
was imminent and he had business there…the boy hungering after
every word, as if he couldn’t possibly get enough and was pushing
on with it for the thing he wanted. He was trembling; the sweat
broke out fresh on his forehead as he stood there pressing me, and
suddenly he bit his lip hard and said, ‘But why did he go!’ as if
nothing had suced.
“ ‘What is it?’ I asked him. ‘What did you need from him? I’m
sure he would want me to…’
“ ‘He was my friend!’ He turned on me suddenly, his voice
dropping with repressed outrage.
“ ‘You’re not well,’ I said to him. ‘You need rest. There’s
something…’ and now I pointed to it, attentive to his every move
‘…on your throat.’ He didn’t even know what I meant. His ngers
searched for the place, found it, rubbed it.
“ ‘What does it matter? I don’t know. The insects, they’re
everywhere,’ he said, turning away from me. ‘Did he say anything
else?’
“For a long while I watched him move up the Rue Royale, a
frantic, lanky gure in rusty black, for whom the bulk of the
trac made way.
“I told Claudia at once about the wound on his throat.
“It was our last night in New Orleans. We’d board the ship just
before midnight tomorrow for an early-morning departure. We
had agreed to walk out together. She was being solicitous, and
there was something remarkably sad in her face, something which
had not left after she had cried. ‘What could the marks mean?’ she
asked me now. ‘That he fed on the boy when the boy slept, that
the boy allowed it? I can’t imagine…’ she said.
“ ‘Yes, that must be what it is.’ But I was uncertain. I
remembered now Lestat’s remark to Claudia that he knew a boy
who would make a better vampire than she. Had he planned to do
that? Planned to make another one of us?
“ ‘It doesn’t matter now, Louis,’ she reminded me. We had to
say our farewell to New Orleans. We were walking away from the
crowds of the Rue Royale. My senses were keen to all around me,
holding it close, reluctant to say this was the last night.
“The old French city had been for the most part burned a long
time ago, and the architecture of these days was as it is now,
Spanish, which meant that, as we walked slowly through the very
narrow street where one cabriolet had to stop for another, we
passed whitewashed walls and great courtyard gates that revealed
distant lamplit courtyard paradises like our own, only each
seemed to hold such promise, such sensual mystery. Great banana
trees stroked the galleries of the inner courts, and masses of fern
and ower crowded the mouth of the passage. Above, in the dark,
gures sat on the balconies, their backs to the open doors, their
hushed voices and the apping of their fans barely audible above
the soft river breeze; and over the walls grew wisteria and
passiora so thick that we could brush against it as we passed and
stop occasionally at this place or that to pluck a luminescent rose
or tendrils of honeysuckle. Through the high windows we saw
again and again the play of candlelight on richly embossed plaster
ceilings and often the bright iridescent wreath of a crystal
chandelier. Occasionally a gure dressed for evening appeared at
the railings, the glitter of jewels at her throat, her perfume adding
a lush evanescent spice to the owers in the air.
“We had our favorite streets, gardens, corners, but inevitably
we reached the outskirts of the old city and saw the rise of
swamp. Carriage after carriage passed us coming in from the
Bayou Road bound for the theater or the opera. But now the lights
of the city lay behind us, and its mingled scents were drowned in
the thick odor of swamp decay. The very sight of the tall,
wavering trees, their limbs hung with moss, had sickened me,
made me think of Lestat. I was thinking of him as I’d thought of
my brother’s body. I was seeing him sunk deep among the roots of
cypress and oak, that hideous withered form folded in the white
sheet. I wondered if the creatures of the dark shunned him,
knowing instinctively the parched, crackling thing there was
virulent, or whether they swarmed about him in the reeking
water, picking his ancient dried esh from the bones.
“I turned away from the swamps, back to the heart of the old
city, and felt the gentle press of Claudia’s hand comforting. She
had gathered a natural bouquet from all the garden walls, and she
held it crushed to the bosom of her yellow dress, her face buried
in its perfume. Now she said to me in such a whisper that I bent
my ear to her, ‘Louis, it troubles you. You know the remedy. Let
the esh…let the esh instruct the mind.’ She let my hand go, and
I watched her move away from me, turning once to whisper the
same command. ‘Forget him. Let the esh instruct the mind….’ It
brought back to me that book of poems I’d held in my hand when
she rst spoke these words to me, and I saw the verse upon the
page:
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.
“She was smiling from the far corner, a bit of yellow silk visible
for a moment in the narrowing dark, then gone. My companion,
my companion forever.
“I was turning into the Rue Dumaine, moving past darkened
windows. A lamp died very slowly behind a broad scrim of heavy
lace, the shadow of the pattern on the brick expanding, growing
fainter, then vanishing into blackness. I moved on, nearing the
house of Madame LeClair, hearing faint but shrill the violins from
the upstairs parlor and then the thin metallic laughter of the
guests. I stood across from the house in the shadows, seeing a
small handful of them moving in the lighted rooms; from window
to window to window moved one guest, a pale lemon-colored
wine in his stem glass, his face turned towards the moon as if he
sought something from a better vantage and found it nally at the
last window, his hand on the dark drape.
“Across from me a door stood open in the brick wall, and a
light fell on the passage at the far end. I moved silently over the
narrow street and met the thick aromas of the kitchen rising on
the air past the gate. The slightly nauseating smell of cooking
meat. I stepped into the passage. Someone had just walked fast
across the courtyard and shut a rear door. But then I saw another
gure. She stood by the kitchen re, a lean black woman with a
brilliant tignon around her head, her features delicately chiselled
and gleaming in the light like a gure in diorite. She stirred the
mixture in the kettle. I caught the sweet smell of the spices and
the fresh green of marjoram and bay leaf; and then in a wave
came the horrid smell of the cooking meat, the blood and esh
decaying in the boiling uids. I drew near and saw her set down
her long iron spoon and stand with her hands on her generous,
tapered hips, the white of her apron sash outlining her small, ne
waist. The juices of the pot foamed on the lip and spit in the
glowing coals below. Her dark odor came to me, her dusky spiced
perfume, stronger than the curious mixture from the pot,
tantalizing as I drew nearer and rested back against a wall of
matted vine. Upstairs the thin violins began a waltz, and the
oorboards groaned with the dancing couples. The jasmine of the
wall enclosed me and then receded like water leaving the clean-
swept beach; and again I sensed her salt perfume. She had moved
to the kitchen door, her long black neck gracefully bent as she
peered into the shadows beneath the lighted window. ‘Monsieur!’
she said, and stepped out now into the shaft of yellow light. It fell
on her great round breasts and long sleek silken arms and now on
the long cold beauty of her face. ‘You’re looking for the party,
Monsieur?’ she asked. ‘The party’s upstairs.…’
“ ‘No, my dear, I wasn’t looking for the party,’ I said to her,
moving forward out of the shadows. ‘I was looking for you.’ ”
“Everything was ready when I awoke the next evening: the
wardrobe trunk on its way to the ship as well as a chest which
contained a con; the servants gone; the furnishings draped in
white. The sight of the tickets and a collection of notes of credit
and some other papers all placed together in a at black wallet
made the trip emerge into the bright light of reality. I would have
forgone killing had that been possible, and so I took care of this
early, and perfunctorily, as did Claudia; and as it neared time for
us to leave, I was alone in the at, waiting for her. She had been
gone too long for my nervous frame of mind. I feared for her—
though she could bewitch almost anyone into assisting her if she
found herself too far away from home, and had many times
persuaded strangers to bring her to her very door, to her father,
who thanked them profusely for returning his lost daughter.
“When she came now she was running, and I fancied as I put
my book down that she had forgotten the time. She thought it
later than it was. By my pocket watch we had an hour. But the
instant she reached the door, I knew that this was wrong. ‘Louis,
the doors!’ she gasped, her chest heaving, her hand at her heart.
She ran back down the passage with me behind her and, as she
desperately signalled me, I shut up the doors to the gallery. ‘What
is it?’ I asked her. ‘What’s come over you?’ But she was moving to
the front windows now, the long French windows which opened
onto the narrow balconies over the street. She lifted the shade of
the lamp and quickly blew out the ame. The room went dark,
and then lightened gradually with the illumination of the street.
She stood panting, her hand on her breast, and then she reached
out for me and drew me close to her beside the window.
“ ‘Someone followed me,’ she whispered now. ‘I could hear him
block after block behind me. At rst, I thought it was nothing!’
She stopped for breath, her face blanched in the bluish light that
came from the windows across the way. ‘Louis, it was the
musician,’ she whispered.
“ ‘But what does that matter? He must have seen you with
Lestat.’
“ ‘Louis, he’s down there. Look out the window. Try to see him.’
She seemed so shaken, almost afraid. As if she would not stand
exposed on the threshold. I stepped out on the balcony, though I
held her hand as she hovered by the drape; and she held me so
tightly that it seemed she feared for me. It was eleven o’clock and
the Rue Royale for the moment was quiet: shops shut, the trac
of the theater just gone away. A door slammed somewhere to my
right, and I saw a woman and a man emerge and hurry towards
the corner, the woman’s face hidden beneath an enormous white
hat. Their steps died away. I could see no one, sense no one. I
could hear Claudia’s labored breathing. Something stirred in the
house; I started, then recognized it as the jingling and rustling of
the birds. We’d forgotten the birds. But Claudia had started worse
than I, and she pulled near to me. ‘There is no one, Claudia…’ I
started to whisper to her.
“Then I saw the musician.
“He had been standing so still in the doorway of the furniture
shop that I had been totally unaware of him, and he must have
wanted this to be so. For now he turned his face upwards,
towards me, and it shone from the dark like a white light. The
frustration and care were utterly erased from his stark features;
his great dark eyes peered at me from the white esh. He had
become a vampire.
“ ‘I see him,’ I murmured to her, my lips as still as possible, my
eyes holding his eyes. I felt her move closer, her hand trembling,
a heart beating in the palm of her hand. She let out a gasp when
she saw him now. But at the same moment, something chilled me
even as I stared at him and he did not move. Because I heard a
step in the lower passage. I heard the gate-hinge groan. And then
that step again, deliberate, loud, echoing under the arched ceiling
of the carriage way, deliberate, familiar. That step advancing now
up the spiral stairs. A thin scream rose from Claudia, and then she
caught it at once with her hand. The vampire in the furniture
shop door had not moved. And I knew the step on the stairs. I
knew the step on the porch. It was Lestat. Lestat pulling on the
door, now pounding on it, now ripping at it, as if to tear it loose
from the very wall. Claudia moved back into the corner of the
room, her body bent, as if someone had struck her a sharp blow,
her eyes moving frantically from the gure in the street to me.
The pounding on the door grew louder. And then I heard his
voice. ‘Louis!’ he called to me. ‘Louis!’ he roared against the door.
And then came the smash of the back parlor window. And I could
hear the latch turning from within. Quickly, I grabbed the lamp,
struck a match hard and broke it in my frenzy, then got the ame
as I wanted it and held the small vessel of kerosene poised in my
hand. ‘Get away from the window. Shut it,’ I told her. And she
obeyed as if the sudden clear, spoken command released her from
a paroxysm of fear. ‘And light the other lamps, now, at once.’ I
heard her crying as she struck the match. Lestat was coming down
the hallway.
“And then he stood at the door. I let out a gasp, and, not
meaning to, I must have taken several steps backwards when I
saw him. I could hear Claudia’s cry. It was Lestat beyond
question, restored and intact as he hung in the doorway, his head
thrust forward, his eyes bulging, as if he were drunk and needed
the door jamb to keep him from plunging headlong into the room.
His skin was a mass of scars, a hideous covering of injured esh,
as though every wrinkle of his ‘death’ had left its mark upon him.
He was seared and marked as if by the random strokes of a hot
poker, and his once clear gray eyes were shot with hemorrhaged
vessels.
“ ‘Stay back…for the love of God…’ I whispered. ‘I’ll throw it at
you. I’ll burn you alive,’ I said to him. And at the same moment I
could hear a sound to my left, something scraping, scratching
against the facade of the town house. It was the other one. I saw
his hands now on the wrought-iron balcony. Claudia let out a
piercing scream as he threw his weight against the glass doors.
“I cannot tell you all that happened then. I cannot possibly
recount it as it was. I remember heaving the lamp at Lestat; it
smashed at his feet and the ames rose at once from the carpet. I
had a torch then in my hands, a great tangle of sheet I’d pulled
from the couch and ignited in the ames. But I was struggling
with him before that, kicking and driving savagely at his great
strength. And somewhere in the background were Claudia’s
panicked screams. And the other lamp was broken. And the
drapes of the windows blazed. I remember that his clothes reeked
of kerosene and that he was at one point smacking wildly at the
ames. He was clumsy, sick, unable to keep his balance; but when
he had me in his grip, I even tore at his ngers with my teeth to
get him o. There was noise rising in the street, shouts, the sound
of a bell. The room itself had fast become an inferno, and I did see
in one clear blast of light Claudia battling the edgling vampire.
He seemed unable to close his hands on her, like a clumsy human
after a bird. I remember rolling over and over with Lestat in the
ames, feeling the suocating heat in my face, seeing the ames
above his back when I rolled under him. And then Claudia rose up
out of the confusion and was striking at him over and over with
the poker until his grip broke and I scrambled loose from him. I
saw the poker coming down again and again on him and could
hear the snarls rising from Claudia in time with the poker, like the
stress of an unconscious animal. Lestat was holding his hand, his
face a grimace of pain. And there, sprawled on the smoldering
carpet, lay the other one, blood owing from his head.
“What happened then is not clear to me. I think I grabbed the
poker from her and gave him one ne blow with it to the side of
the head. I remember that he seemed unstoppable, invulnerable to
the blows. The heat, by this time, was singeing my clothes, had
caught Claudia’s gossamer gown, so that I grabbed her up and ran
down the passage trying to stie the ames with my body. I
remember taking o my coat and beating at the ames in the
open air, and men rushing up the stairs and past me. A great
crowd swelled from the passage into the courtyard, and someone
stood on the sloped roof of the brick kitchen. I had Claudia in my
arms now and was rushing past them all, oblivious to the
questions, thrusting a shoulder through them, making them
divide. And then I was free with her, hearing her pant and sob in
my ear, running blindly down the Rue Royale, down the rst
narrow street, running and running until there was no sound but
the sound of my running. And her breath. And we stood there, the
man and the child, scorched and aching, and breathing deep in
the quiet of night.”
PART II
ALL NIGHT LONG I stood on the deck of the French ship Mariana,
watching the gangplanks. The long levee was crowded, and
parties lasted late in the lavish staterooms, the decks rumbling
with passengers and guests. But nally, as the hours moved
towards dawn, the parties were over one by one, and carriages
left the narrow riverfront streets. A few late passengers came
aboard, a couple lingered for hours at the rail nearby. But Lestat
and his apprentice, if they survived the re (and I was convinced
that they had) did not nd their way to the ship. Our luggage had
left the at that day; and if anything had remained to let them
know our destination, I was sure it had been destroyed. Yet still I
watched. Claudia sat securely locked in our stateroom, her eyes
xed on the porthole. But Lestat did not come.
“Finally, as I’d hoped, the commotion of putting out
commenced before daylight. A few people waved from the pier
and the grassy hump of the levee as the great ship began rst to
shiver, then to jerk violently to one side, and then to slide out in
one great majestic motion into the current of the Mississippi.
“The lights of New Orleans grew small and dim until there
appeared behind us only a pale phosphorescence against the
lightening clouds. I was fatigued beyond my worst memory, yet I
stood on the deck for as long as I could see that light, knowing
that I might never see it again. In moments we were carried
downstream past the piers of Freniere and Pointe du Lac and
then, as I could see the great wall of cottonwood and cypress
growing green out of the darkness along the shore, I knew it was
almost morning. Too perilously close.
“And as I put the key into the lock of the cabin I felt the
greatest exhaustion perhaps that I’d ever known. Never in all the
years I’d lived in our select family had I known the fear I’d
experienced tonight, the vulnerability, the sheer terror. And there
was to be no sudden relief from it. No sudden sense of safety.
Only that relief which weariness at last imposes, when neither
mind nor body can endure the terror any longer. For though
Lestat was now miles away from us, he had in his resurrection
awakened in me a tangle of complex fears which I could not
escape. Even as Claudia said to me, ‘We’re safe, Louis, safe,’ and I
whispered the word yes to her, I could see Lestat hanging in that
doorway, see those bulbous eyes, that scarred esh. How had he
come back, how had he triumphed over death? How could any
creature have survived that shrivelled ruin he’d become?
Whatever the answer, what did it mean—not only for him, but for
Claudia, for me? Safe from him we were, but safe from ourselves?
“The ship was struck by a strange ‘fever.’ It was amazingly
clean of vermin, however, though occasionally their bodies might
be found, weightless and dry, as if the creatures had been dead for
days. Yet there was this fever. It struck a passenger rst in the
form of weakness and a soreness about the throat; occasionally
there were marks there, and occasionally the marks were
someplace else; or sometimes there were no recognizable marks at
all, though an old wound was reopened and painful again. And
sometimes the passenger who fell to sleeping more and more as
the voyage progressed and the fever progressed died in his sleep.
So there were burials at sea on several occasions as we crossed the
Atlantic. Naturally afraid of fever, I shunned the passengers, did
not wish to join them in the smoking room, get to know their
stories, hear their dreams and expectations. I took my ‘meals’
alone. But Claudia liked to watch the passengers, to stand on deck
and see them come and go in the early evening, to say softly to
me later as I sat at the porthole, ‘I think she’ll fall prey.…’
“I would put the book down and look out the porthole, feeling
the gentle rocking of the sea, seeing the stars, more clear and
brilliant than they had ever been on land, dipping down to touch
the waves. It seemed at moments, when I sat alone in the dark
stateroom, that the sky had come down to meet the sea and that
some great secret was to be revealed in that meeting, some great
gulf miraculously closed forever. But who was to make this
revelation when the sky and sea became indistinguishable and
neither any longer was chaos? God? Or Satan? It struck me
suddenly what consolation it would be to know Satan, to look
upon his face, no matter how terrible that countenance was, to
know that I belonged to him totally, and thus put to rest forever
the torment of this ignorance. To step through some veil that
would forever separate me from all that I called human nature.
“I felt the ship moving closer and closer to this secret. There
was no visible end to the rmament; it closed about us with
breathtaking beauty and silence. But then the words put to rest
became horrible. Because there would be no rest in damnation,
could be no rest; and what was this torment compared to the
restless res of hell? The sea rocking beneath those constant stars
—those stars themselves—what had this to do with Satan? And
those images which sound so static to us in childhood when we
are all so taken up with mortal frenzy that we can scarce imagine
them desirable: seraphim gazing forever upon the face of God—
and the face of God itself—this was rest eternal, of which this
gentle, cradling sea was only the faintest promise.
“But even in these moments, when the ship slept and all the
world slept, neither heaven nor hell seemed more than a
tormenting fancy. To know, to believe, in one or the other…that
was perhaps the only salvation for which I could dream.
“Claudia, with Lestat’s liking for light, lit the lamps when she
rose. She had a marvellous pack of playing cards, acquired from a
lady on board; the picture cards were in the fashion of Marie
Antoinette, and the backs of the cards bore gold eurs-de-lis on
gleaming violet. She played a game of solitaire in which the cards
made the numbers of a clock. And she asked me until I nally
began to answer her, how Lestat had accomplished it. She was no
longer shaken. If she remembered her screams in the re she did
not care to dwell on them. If she remembered that, before the re,
she had wept real tears in my arms, it made no change in her; she
was, as always in the past, a person of little indecision, a person
for whom habitual quiet did not mean anxiety or regret.
“ ‘We should have burned him,’ she said. ‘We were fools to
think from his appearance that he was dead.’
“ ‘But how could he have survived?’ I asked her. ‘You saw him,
you know what became of him.’ I had no taste for it, really. I
would have gladly pushed it to the back of my mind, but my mind
would not allow me to. And it was she who gave me the answers
now, for the dialogue was really with herself. ‘Suppose, though,
he had ceased to ght us,’ she explained, ‘that he was still living,
locked in that helpless dried corpse, conscious and calculating.…’
“ ‘Conscious in that state!’ I whispered.
“ ‘And suppose, when he reached the swamp waters and heard
the sounds of our carriage going away, that he had strength
enough to propel those limbs to move. There were creatures all
around him in the dark. I saw him once rip the head of a small
garden lizard and watch the blood run down into a glass. Can you
imagine the tenacity of the will to live in him, his hands groping
in that water for anything that moved?’
“ ‘The will to live? Tenacity?’ I murmured. ‘Suppose it was
something else.…’
“ ‘And then, when he’d felt the resuscitation of his strength, just
enough perhaps to have sustained him to the road, somewhere
along that road he found someone. Perhaps he crouched, waiting
for a passing carriage; perhaps he crept, gathering still what blood
he could until he came to the shacks of those immigrants or those
scattered country houses. And what a spectacle he must have
been!’ She gazed at the hanging lamp, her eyes narrow, her voice
muted, without emotion. ‘And then what did he do? It’s clear to
me. If he could not have gotten back to New Orleans in time, he
could most denitely have reached the Old Bayou cemetery. The
charity hospital feeds it fresh cons every day. And I can see him
clawing his way through the moist earth for such a con,
dumping the fresh contents out in the swamps, and securing
himself until the next nightfall in that shallow grave where no
manner of man would be wont to disturb him. Yes…that is what
he did, I’m certain.’
“I thought of this for a long time, picturing it, seeing that it
must have happened. And then I heard her add thoughtfully, as
she laid down her card and looked at the oval face of a white-
coied king, ‘I could have done it.
“ ‘And why do you look that way at me?’ she asked, gathering
up her cards, her small ngers struggling to make a neat pack of
them and then to shue them.
“ ‘But you do believe…that had we burned his remains he
would have died?’ I asked.
“ ‘Of course I believe it. If there is nothing to rise, there is
nothing to rise. What are you driving at?’ She was dealing out the
cards now, dealing a hand for me on the small oak table. I looked
at the cards, but I did not touch them.
“ ‘I don’t know…’ I whispered to her. ‘Only that perhaps there
was no will to live, no tenacity…because very simply there was
no need of either.’
“Her eyes gazed at me steadily, giving no hint of her thoughts
or that she understood mine.
“ ‘Because perhaps he was incapable of dying…perhaps he is,
and we are…truly immortal?’
“For a long time she sat there looking at me.
“ ‘Consciousness in that state…’ I nally added, as I looked
away from her. ‘If it were so, then mightn’t there be consciousness
in any other? Fire, sunlight…what does it matter?’
“ ‘Louis,’ she said, her voice soft. ‘You’re afraid. You don’t stand
en garde against fear. You don’t understand the danger of fear
itself. We’ll know these answers when we nd those who can tell
us, those who’ve possessed knowledge for centuries, for however
long creatures such as ourselves have walked the earth. That
knowledge was our birthright, and he deprived us. He earned his
death.’
“ ‘But he didn’t die…’ I said.
“ ‘He’s dead,’ she said. ‘No one could have escaped that house
unless they’d run with us, at our very side. No. He’s dead, and so
is that trembling aesthete, his friend. Consciousness, what does it
matter?’
“She gathered up the cards and put them aside, gesturing for
me to hand her the books from the table beside the bunk, those
books which she’d unpacked immediately on board, the few select
records of vampire lore which she’d taken to be her guides. They
included no wild romances from England, no stories of Edgar
Allan Poe, no fancy. Only those few accounts of the vampires of
eastern Europe, which had become for her a sort of Bible. In those
countries indeed they did burn the remains of the vampire when
they found him, and the heart was staked and the head severed.
She would read these now for hours, these ancient books which
had been read and reread before they ever found their way across
the Atlantic; they were travellers’ tales, the accounts of priests
and scholars. And she would plan our trip, not with the need of
any pen or paper, only in her mind. A trip that would take us at
once away from the glittering capitals of Europe towards the
Black Sea, where we would dock at Varna and begin that search
in the rural countryside of the Carpathians.
“For me it was a grim prospect, bound as I was to it, for there
were longings in me for other places and other knowledge which
Claudia did not begin to comprehend. Seeds of these longings had
been planted in me years ago, seeds which came to bitter ower
as our ship passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the
waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
“I wanted those waters to be blue. And they were not. They
were the nighttime waters, and how I suered then, straining to
remember the seas that a young man’s untutored senses had taken
for granted, that an undisciplined memory had let slip away for
eternity. The Mediterranean was black, black o the coast of Italy,
black o the coast of Greece, black always, black when, in the
small cold hours before dawn, as even Claudia slept, weary of her
books and the meager fare that caution allowed her vampire
hunger, I lowered a lantern down, down through the rising vapor
until the re blazed right over the lapping waters; and nothing
came to light on that heaving surface but the light itself, the
reection of that beam travelling constant with me, a steady eye
which seemed to x on me from the depths and say, ‘Louis, your
quest is for darkness only. This sea is not your sea. The myths of
men are not your myths. Men’s treasures are not yours.’
“But oh, how the quest for the Old World vampires lled me
with bitterness in those moments, a bitterness I could all but taste,
as if the very air had lost its freshness. For what secrets, what
truths had those monstrous creatures of night to give us? What, of
necessity, must be their terrible limits, if indeed we were to nd
them at all? What can the damned really say to the damned?
“I never stepped ashore at Piraeus. Yet in my mind I roamed the
Acropolis at Athens, watching the moon rise through the open
roof of the Parthenon, measuring my height by the grandeur of
those columns, walking the streets of those Greeks who died at
Marathon, listening to the sound of wind in the ancient olives.
These were the monuments of men who could not die, not the
stones of the living dead; here the secrets that had endured the
passage of time, which I had only dimly begun to understand. And
yet nothing turned me from our quest and nothing could turn me,
but over and over, committed as I was, I pondered the great risk
of our questions, the risk of any question that is truthfully asked;
for the answer must carry an incalculable price, a tragic danger.
Who knew that better than I, who had presided over the death of
my own body, seeing all I called human wither and die only to
form an unbreakable chain which held me fast to this world yet
made me forever its exile, a specter with a beating heart?
“The sea lulled me to bad dreams, to sharp remembrances. A
winter night in New Orleans when I wandered through the St.
Louis cemetery and saw my sister, old and bent, a bouquet of
white roses in her arms, the thorns carefully bound in an old
parchment, her gray head bowed, her steps carrying her steadily
along through the perilous dark to the grave where the stone of
her brother Louis was set, side by side with that of his younger
brother…Louis, who had died in the re of Pointe du Lac leaving
a generous legacy to a godchild and namesake she never knew.
Those owers were for Louis, as if it had not been half a century
since his death, as if her memory, like Louis’s memory, left her no
peace. Sorrow sharpened her ashen beauty, sorrow bent her
narrow back. And what I would not have given, as I watched her,
to touch her silver hair, to whisper love to her, if love would not
have loosed on her remaining years a horror worse than grief. I
left her with grief. Over and over and over.
“And I dreamed now too much. I dreamed too long, in the
prison of this ship, in the prison of my body, attuned as it was to
the rise of every sun as no mortal body had ever been. And my
heart beat faster for the mountains of eastern Europe, nally, beat
faster for the one hope that somewhere we might nd in that
primitive countryside the answer to why under God this suering
was allowed to exist—why under God it was allowed to begin,
and how under God it might be ended. I had not the courage to
end it, I knew, without that answer. And in time the waters of the
Mediterranean became, in fact, the waters of the Black Sea.”
THE VAMPIRE SIGHED. The boy was resting on his elbow, his face
cradled in his right palm; and his avid expression was
incongruous with the redness of his eyes.
“Do you think I’m playing with you?” the vampire asked, his
ne dark eyebrows knitted for an instant.
“No,” the boy said quickly. “I know better than to ask you any
more questions. You’ll tell me everything in your own time.” And
his mouth settled, and he looked at the vampire as though he
were ready for him to begin again.
There was a sound then from far o. It came from somewhere
in the old Victorian building around them, the rst such sound
they’d heard. The boy looked up towards the hallway door. It was
as if he’d forgotten the building existed. Someone walked heavily
on the old boards. But the vampire was undisturbed. He looked
away as if he were again disengaging himself from the present.
“That village. I can’t tell you the name of it; the name’s gone. I
remember it was miles from the coast, however, and we’d been
travelling alone by carriage. And such a carriage! It was Claudia’s
doing, that carriage, and I should have expected it; but then,
things are always taking me unawares. From the rst moment we
arrived in Varna, I had perceived certain changes in her which
made me at once aware she was Lestat’s daughter as well as my
own. From me she had learned the value of money, but from
Lestat she had inherited a passion for spending it; and she wasn’t
to leave without the most luxurious black coach we could
manage, outtted with leather seats that might have
accommodated a band of travellers, let alone a man and a child
who used the magnicent compartment only for the
transportation of an ornately carved oak chest. To the back were
strapped two trunks of the nest clothes the shops there could
provide, and we went speeding along, those light enormous
wheels and ne springs carrying that bulk with a frightening ease
over the mountain roads. There was a thrill to that when there
was nothing else in this strange country, those horses at a gallop
and the gentle listing of that carriage.
“And it was strange country. Lonely, dark, as rural country is
always dark, its castles and ruins often obscured when the moon
passed behind the clouds, so that I felt an anxiety during those
hours I’d never quite experienced in New Orleans. And the people
themselves were no relief. We were naked and lost in their tiny
hamlets, and conscious always that amongst them we were in
grave danger.
“Never in New Orleans had the kill to be disguised. The ravages
of fever, plague, crime—these things competed with us always
there, and outdid us. But here we had to go to great lengths to
make the kill unnoticed. Because these simple country people,
who might have found the crowded streets of New Orleans
terrifying, believed completely that the dead did walk and did
drink the blood of the living. They knew our names: vampire,
devil. And we, who were on the lookout for the slightest rumor,
wanted under no circumstances to create rumor ourselves.
“We travelled alone and fast and lavishly amongst them,
struggling to be safe within our ostentation, nding talk of
vampires all too cheap by the inn res, where, my daughter
sleeping peacefully against my chest, I invariably found someone
amongst the peasants or guests who spoke enough German or, at
times, even French to discuss with me the familiar legends.
“But nally we came to that village which was to be the turning
point in our travels. I savor nothing about that journey, not the
freshness of the air, the coolness of the nights. I don’t talk of it
without a vague tremor even now.
“We had been at a farmhouse the night before, and so no news
prepared us—only the desolate appearance of the place: because
it wasn’t late when we reached it, not late enough for all the
shutters of the little street to be bolted or for a darkened lantern
to be swinging idly from the broad archway of the inn.
“Refuse was collected in the doorways. And there were other
signs that something was wrong. A small box of withered owers
beneath a shuttered shop window. A barrel rolling back and forth
in the center of the inn yard. The place had the aspect of a town
under siege by the plague.
“But even as I was setting Claudia down on the packed earth
beside the carriage, I saw the crack of light beneath the inn door.
‘Put the hood of your cape up,’ she said quickly. ‘They’re coming.’
Someone inside was pulling back the latch.
“At rst all I saw was the light behind the gure in the very
narrow margin she allowed. Then the light from the carriage
lanterns glinted in her eye.
“ ‘A room for the night!’ I said in German. ‘And my horses need
tending, badly!’
“ ‘The night’s no time for travelling…’ she said to me in a
peculiar, at voice. ‘And with a child.’ As she said this, I noticed
others in the room behind her. I could hear their murmurings and
see the ickering of a re. From what I could see there were
mostly peasants gathered around it, except for one man who was
dressed much like myself in a tailored coat, with an overcoat over
his shoulders; but his clothes were neglected and shabby. His red
hair gleamed in the relight. He was a foreigner, like ourselves,
and he was the only one not looking at us. His head wagged
slightly as if he were drunk.
“ ‘My daughter’s tired,’ I said to the woman. ‘We’ve no place to
stay but here.’ And now I took Claudia into my arms. She turned
her face towards me, and I heard her whisper, ‘Louis, the garlic,
the crucix above the door!’
“I had not seen these things. It was a small crucix, with the
body of Christ in bronze xed to the wood, and the garlic was
wreathed around it, a fresh garland entwined with an old one, in
which the buds were withered and dried. The woman’s eyes
followed my eyes, and then she looked at me sharply and I could
see how exhausted she was, how red were her pupils, and how
the hand which clutched at the shawl at her breast trembled. Her
black hair was completely dishevelled. I pressed nearer until I was
almost at the threshold, and she opened the door wide suddenly
as if she’d only just decided to let us in. She said a prayer as I
passed her, I was sure of it, though I couldn’t understand the
Slavic words.
“The small, low-beamed room was lled with people, men and
women along the rough, panelled walls, on benches and even on
the oor. It was as if the entire village were gathered there. A
child slept in a woman’s lap and another slept on the staircase,
bundled in blankets, his knees tucked in against one step, his arms
making a pillow for his head on the next. And everywhere there
was the garlic hanging from nails and hooks, along with the
cooking pots and agons. The re was the only light, and it threw
distorting shadows on the still faces as they watched us.
“No one motioned for us to sit or oered us anything, and
nally the woman told me in German I might take the horses into
the stable if I liked. She was staring at me with those slightly
wild, red-rimmed eyes, and then her face softened. She told me
she’d stand at the inn door for me with a lantern, but I must hurry
and leave the child here.
“But something else had distracted me, a scent I detected
beneath the heavy fragrance of burning wood and the wine. It
was the scent of death. I could feel Claudia’s hand press my chest,
and I saw her tiny nger pointing to a door at the foot of the
stairs. The scent came from there.
“The woman had a cup of wine waiting when I returned, and a
bowl of broth. I sat down, Claudia on my knee, her head turned
away from the re towards that mysterious door. All eyes were
xed on us as before, except for the foreigner. I could see his
prole now clearly. He was much younger than I’d thought, his
haggard appearance stemming from emotion. He had a lean but
very pleasant face actually, his light, freckled skin making him
seem like a boy. His wide, blue eyes were xed on the re as
though he were talking to it, and his eyelashes and eyebrows were
golden in the light, which gave him a very innocent, open
expression. But he was miserable, disturbed, drunk. Suddenly he
turned to me, and I saw he’d been crying. ‘Do you speak English?’
he said, his voice booming in the silence.
“ ‘Yes, I do,’ I said to him. And he glanced at the others
triumphantly. They stared at him stonily.
“ ‘You speak English!’ he cried, his lips stretching into a bitter
smile, his eyes moving around the ceiling and then xing on
mine. ‘Get out of this country,’ he said. ‘Get out of it now. Take
your carriage, your horses, drive them till they drop, but get out
of it!’ Then his shoulders convulsed as if he were sick. He put his
hand to his mouth. The woman who stood against the wall now,
her arms folded over her soiled apron, said calmly in German, ‘At
dawn you can go. At dawn.’
“ ‘But what is it?’ I whispered to her; and then I looked to him.
He was watching me, his eyes glassy and red. No one spoke. A log
fell heavily in the re.
“ ‘Won’t you tell me?’ I asked the Englishman gently. He stood
up. For a moment I thought he was going to fall. He loomed over
me, a much taller man than myself, his head pitching forward,
then backward, before he right himself and put his hands on the
edge of the table. His black coat was stained with wine, and so
was his shirt cu. ‘You want to see?’ he gasped as he peered into
my eyes. ‘Do you want to see for yourself?’ There was a soft,
pathetic tone to his voice as he spoke these words.
“ ‘Leave the child!’ said the woman abruptly, with a quick,
imperious gesture.
“ ‘She’s sleeping,’ I said. And, rising, I followed the Englishman
to the door at the foot of the stairs.
“There was a slight commotion as those nearest the door moved
away from it. And we entered a small parlor together.
“Only one candle burned on the sideboard, and the rst thing I
saw was a row of delicately painted plates on a shelf. There were
curtains on the small window, and a gleaming picture of the
Virgin Mary and Christ child on the wall. But the walls and chairs
barely enclosed a great oak table, and on that table lay the body
of a young woman, her white hands folded on her breast, her
auburn hair mussed and tucked about her thin, white throat and
under her shoulders. Her pretty face was already hard with death.
Amber rosary beads gleamed around her wrist and down the side
of her dark wool skirt. And beside her lay a very pretty red felt
hat with a wide, soft brim and a veil, and a pair of dark gloves. It
was all laid there as if she would very soon rise and put these
things on. And the Englishman patted the hat carefully now as he
drew close to her. He was on the verge of breaking down
altogether. He’d drawn a large handkerchief out of his coat, and
he had put it to his face. ‘Do you know what they want to do with
her?’ he whispered as he looked at me. ‘Do you have any idea?’
“The woman came in behind us and reached for his arm, but he
roughtly shook her o. ‘Do you know?’ he demanded of me with
his eyes erce. ‘Savages!’
“ ‘You stop now!’ she said under her breath.
“He clenched his teeth and shook his head, so that a shock of
his red hair loosened in his eyes. ‘You get away from her,’ he said
to the woman in German. ‘Get away from me.’ Someone was
whispering in the other room. The Englishman looked again at the
young woman, and his eyes lled with tears. ‘So innocent,’ he said
softly; and then he glanced at the ceiling and, making a st with
his right hand, he gasped, ‘Damn you…God! Damn you!’
“ ‘Lord,’ the woman whispered, and quickly she made the Sign
of the Cross.
“ ‘Do you see this?’ he asked me. And he pried very carefully at
the lace of the dead woman’s throat, as though he could not, did
not wish to actually touch the hardening esh. There on her
throat, unmistakable, were the two puncture wounds, as I’d seen
them a thousand times upon a thousand, engraved in the
yellowing skin. The man drew his hands up to his face, his tall,
lean body rocking on the balls of his feet. ‘I think I’m going mad!’
he said.
“ ‘Come now,’ said the woman, holding onto him as he
struggled, her face suddenly ushed.
“ ‘Let him be,’ I said to her. ‘Just let him be. I’ll take care of
him.’
“Her mouth contorted. ‘I’ll throw you all out of here, out into
that dark, if you don’t stop.’ She was too weary for this, too close
to some breaking point herself. But then she turned her back on
us, drawing her shawl tight around her, and padded softly out,
the men who’d gathered at the door making way for her.
“The Englishman was crying.
“I could see what I must do, but it wasn’t only that I wanted so
much to learn from him, my heart pounding with silent
excitement. It was heartrending to see him this way. Fate brought
me too mercilessly close to him.
“ ‘I’ll stay with you,’ I oered. And I brought two chairs up
beside the table. He sat down heavily, his eyes on the ickering
candle at his side. I shut the door, and the walls seemed to recede
and the circle of the candle to grow brighter around his bowed
head. He leaned back against the sideboard and wiped his face
with his handkerchief. Then he drew a leatherbound ask from
his pocket and oered it to me, and I said no.
“ ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’
“He nodded. ‘Perhaps you can bring some sanity to this place,’
he said. ‘You’re a Frenchman, aren’t you? You know, I’m English.’
“ ‘Yes,’ I nodded.
“And then, pressing my hand fervently, the liquor so dulling his
senses that he never felt the coldness of it, he told me his name
was Morgan and he needed me desperately, more than he’d ever
needed anyone in his life. And at that moment, holding that hand,
feeling the fever of it, I did a strange thing. I told him my name,
which I conded to almost no one. But he was looking at the dead
woman as if he hadn’t heard me, his lips forming what appeared
to be the faintest smile, the tears standing in his eyes. His
expression would have moved any human being; it might have
been more than some could bear.
“ ‘I did this,’ he said, nodding. ‘I brought her here.’ And he
raised his eyebrows as if wondering at it.
“ ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘You didn’t do it. Tell me who did.’
“But then he seemed confused, lost in thought. ‘I’d never been
out of England,’ he started. ‘I was painting, you see…as if it
mattered now…the paintings, the book! I thought it all so quaint!
So picturesque!’ His eyes moved over the room, his voice trailing
o. For a long time he looked at her again, and then softly he said
to her, ‘Emily,’ and I felt I’d glimpsed something precious he held
to his heart.
“Gradually, then, the story began to come. A honeymoon
journey, through Germany, into this country, wherever the
regular coaches would carry them, wherever Morgan found scenes
to paint. And they’d come to this remote place nally because
there was a ruined monastery nearby which was said to be a very
well-preserved place.
“But Morgan and Emily had never reached that monastery.
Tragedy had been waiting for them here.
“It turned out the regular coaches did not come this way, and
Morgan had paid a farmer to bring them by cart. But the
afternoon they arrived, there was a great commotion in the
cemetery outside of town. The farmer, taking one look, refused to
leave his cart to see further.
“ ‘It was some kind of procession, it seemed,’ Morgan said, ‘with
all the people outtted in their best, and some with owers; and
the truth was I thought it quite fascinating. I wanted to see it. I
was so eager I had the fellow leave us, bags and all. We could see
the village just up ahead. Actually it was I more than Emily, of
course, but she was so agreeable, you see. I left her, nally, seated
on our suitcases, and I went on up the hill without her. Did you
see it when you were coming, the cemetery? No, of course you
didn’t. Thank God that carriage of yours brought you here safe
and sound. Though, if you’d driven on, no matter how bad o
your horses were…’ He stopped.
“ ‘What’s the danger?’ I urged him, gently.
“ ‘Ah…danger! Barbarians!’ he murmured. And he glanced at
the door. Then he took another drink from his ask and capped it.
“ ‘Well, it was no procession. I saw that right o,’ he said. ‘The
people wouldn’t even speak to me when I came up—you know
what they are; but they had no objection to letting me watch. The
truth was, you wouldn’t have thought I was standing there at all.
You won’t believe me when I tell you what I saw, but you must
believe me; because if you don’t, I’m mad, I know it.’
“ ‘I will believe you, go on,’ I said.
“ ‘Well, the cemetery was full of fresh graves, I saw that at
once, some of them with new wooden crosses and some of them
just mounds of earth with the owers still fresh; and the peasants
there, they were holding owers, a few of them, as though they
meant to be trimming these graves; but all of them were standing
stock-still, their eyes on these two fellows who had a white horse
by the bridle—and what an animal that was! It was pawing and
stomping and shying to one side, as if it wanted no part of the
place; a beautiful thing it was, though, a splendid animal—a
stallion, and pure white. Well, at some point—and I couldn’t tell
you how they agreed upon it, because not a one of them said a
word—one fellow, the leader, I think, gave the horse a
tremendous whack with the handle of a shovel, and it took o up
the hill, just wild. You can imagine, I thought that was the last
we’d see of that horse for a while for sure. But I was wrong. In a
minute it had slowed to a gallop, and it was turning around
amongst the old graves and coming back down the hill towards
the newer ones. And the people all stood there watching it. No
one made a sound. And here it came trotting right over the
mounds, right through the owers, and no one made a move to
get hold of the bridle. And then suddenly it came to a stop, right
on one of the graves.’
“He wiped at his eyes, but his tears were almost gone. He
seemed fascinated with his tale, as I was.
“ ‘Well, here’s what happened,’ he continued. ‘The animal just
stood there. And suddenly a cry went up from the crowd. No, it
wasn’t a cry, it was as though they were all gasping and moaning,
and then everything went quiet. And the horse was just standing
there, tossing its head; and nally this fellow who was the leader
burst forward and shouted to several of the others; and one of the
women—she screamed, and threw herself on the grave almost
under the horse’s hooves. I came up then as close as I could. I
could see the stone with the deceased’s name on it; it was a young
woman, dead only six months, the dates carved right there, and
there was this miserable woman on her knees in the dirt, with her
arms around the stone now, as if she meant to pull it right up out
of the earth. And these fellows trying to pick her up and get her
away.
“ ‘Now I almost turned back, but I couldn’t, not until I saw what
they meant to do. And, of course, Emily was quite safe, and none
of these people took the slightest notice of either of us. Well, two
of them nally did have that woman up, and then the others had
come with shovels and had begun to dig right into the grave.
Pretty soon one of them was down in the grave, and everyone was
so still you could hear the slightest sound, that shovel digging in
there and the earth thrown up in a heap. I can’t tell you what it
was like. Here was the sun high above us and not a cloud in the
sky, and all of them standing around, holding onto one another
now, and even that pathetic woman…’ He stopped now, because
his eyes had fallen on Emily. I just sat there waiting for him. I
could hear the whiskey when he lifted the ask again, and I felt
glad for him that there was so much there, that he could drink it
and deaden this pain. ‘It might as well have been midnight on
that hill,’ he said, looking at me, his voice very low. ‘That’s how it
felt. And then I could hear this fellow in the grave. He was
cracking the con lid with his shovel! Then out came the broken
boards. He was just tossing them out, right and left. And suddenly
he let out an awful cry! The other fellows drew up close, and all
at once there was a rush to the grave; and then they all fell back
like a wave, all of them crying out, and some of them turning and
trying to push away. And the poor woman, she was wild, bending
her knees, and trying to get free of those men that were holding
onto her. Well, I couldn’t help but go up. I don’t suppose anything
could have kept me away; and I’ll tell you that’s the rst time I’ve
ever done such a thing, and, God help me, it’s to be the last. Now,
you must believe me, you must! But there, right there in that
con, with that fellow standing on the broken boards over her
feet, was the dead woman, and I tell you…I tell you she was as
fresh, as pink’—his voice cracked, and he sat there, his eyes wide,
his hand poised as if he held something invisible in his ngers,
pleading with me to believe him—‘as pink as if she were alive!
Buried six months! And there she lay! The shroud was thrown
back o her, and her hands lay on her breast just as if she were
asleep.’
“He sighed. His hand dropped to his leg and he shook his head,
and for a moment he just sat staring. ‘I swear to you!’ he said.
‘And then this fellow who was in the grave, he bent down and
lifted the dead woman’s hand. I tell you that arm moved as freely
as my arm! And he held her hand out as if he were looking at her
nails. Then he shouted; and that woman beside the grave, she was
kicking at those fellows and shoving at the earth with her foot, so
it fell right down in the corpse’s face and hair. And oh, she was so
pretty, that dead woman; oh, if you could have seen her, and
what they did then!’
“ ‘Tell me what they did,’ I said to him softly. But I knew before
he said it.
“ ‘I tell you…’ he said. ‘We don’t know the meaning of
something like that until we see it!’ And he looked at me, his
eyebrow arched as if he were conding a terrible secret. ‘We just
don’t know.’
“ ‘No, we don’t,’ I said.
“ ‘I’ll tell you. They took a stake, a wooden stake, mind you;
and this one in the grave, he took the stake with a hammer and he
put it right to her breast. I didn’t believe it! And then with one
great blow he drove it right into her. I tell you, I couldn’t have
moved even if I’d wanted to; I was rooted there. And then that
fellow, that beastly fellow, he reached up for his shovel and with
both his arms he drove it sharp, right into the dead woman’s
throat. The head was o like that.’ He shut his eyes, his face
contorted, and put his head to the side.
“I looked at him, but I wasn’t seeing him at all. I was seeing this
woman in her grave with the head severed, and I was feeling the
most keen revulsion inside myself, as if a hand were pressing on
my throat and my insides were coming up inside me and I
couldn’t breathe. Then I felt Claudia’s lip against my wrist. She
was staring at Morgan, and apparently she had been for some
time.
“Slowly Morgan looked up at me, his eyes wild. ‘It’s what they
want to do with her,’ he said. ‘With Emily! Well I won’t let them.’
He shook his head adamantly. ‘I won’t let them. You’ve got to
help me, Louis.’ His lips were trembling, and his face so distorted
now by his sudden desperation that I might have recoiled from it
despite myself. ‘The same blood ows in our veins, you and I. I
mean, French, English, we’re civilized men, Louis. They’re
savages!’
“ ‘Try to be calm now, Morgan,’ I said, reaching out for him. ‘I
want you to tell me what happened then. You and Emily…’
“He was struggling for his bottle. I drew it out of his pocket,
and he took o the cap. ‘That’s a fellow, Louis; that’s a friend,’ he
said emphatically. ‘You see, I took her away fast. They were going
to burn that corpse right there in the cemetery; and Emily was not
to see that, not while I…’ He shook his head. ‘There wasn’t a
carriage to be found that would take us out of here; not a single
one of them would leave now for the two days’ drive to get us to
a decent place!’
“ ‘But how did they explain it to you, Morgan?’ I insisted. I
could see he did not have much time left.
“ ‘Vampires!’ he burst out, the whiskey sloshing on his hand.
‘Vampires, Louis. Can you believe that!’ And he gestured to the
door with the bottle. ‘A plague of vampires! All this in whispers,
as if the devil himself were listening at the door! Of course, God
have mercy, they put a stop to it. That unfortunate woman in the
cemetery, they’d stopped her from clawing her way up nightly to
feed on the rest of us!’ He put the bottle to his lips. ‘Oh…God…’
he moaned.
“I watched him drink, patiently waiting.
“ ‘And Emily…’ he continued. ‘She thought it fascinating. What
with the re out there and a decent dinner and a proper glass of
wine. She hadn’t seen that woman! She hadn’t seen what they’d
done,’ he said desperately. ‘Oh, I wanted to get out of here; I
oered them money. “If it’s over,” I kept saying to them, “one of
you ought to want this money, a small fortune just to drive us out
of here.’ ”
“ ‘But it wasn’t over…’ I whispered.
“And I could see the tears gathering in his eyes, his mouth
twisting with pain.
“ ‘How did it happen to her?’ I asked him.
“ ‘I don’t know,’ he gasped, shaking his head, the ask pressed
to his forehead as if it were something cool, refreshing, when it
was not.
“ ‘It came into the inn?’
“ ‘They said she went out to it,’ he confessed, the tears coursing
down his cheeks. ‘Everything was locked! They saw to that.
Doors, windows! Then it was morning and they were all shouting,
and she was gone. The window stood wide open, and she wasn’t
there. I didn’t even take time for my robe. I was running. I came
to a dead halt over her, out there, behind the inn. My foot all but
came down on her…she was just lying there under the peach
trees. She held an empty cup. Clinging to it, an empty cup! They
said it lured her…she was trying to give it water….’
“The ask slipped from his hands. He clapped his hands over
his ears, his body bent, his head bowed.
“For a long time I sat there watching him; I had no words to say
to him. And when he cried softly that they wanted to desecrate
her, that they said she, Emily, was now a vampire, I assured him
softly, though I don’t think he ever heard me, that she was not.
“He moved forward nally, as if he might fall. He appeared to
be reaching for the candle, and before his arm rested on the
buet, his nger touched it so the hot wax extinguished the tiny
bit that was left of the wick. We were in darkness then, and his
head had fallen on his arm.
“All of the light of the room seemed gathered now in Claudia’s
eyes. But as the silence lengthened and I sat there, wondering,
hoping Morgan wouldn’t lift his head again, the woman came to
the door. Her candle illuminated him, drunk, asleep.
“ ‘You go now,’ she said to me. Dark gures crowded around
her, and the old wooden inn was alive with the shuing of men
and women. ‘Go by the re!’
“ ‘What are you going to do!’ I demanded of her, rising and
holding Claudia. ‘I want to know what you propose to do!’
“ ‘Go by the re,’ she commanded.
“ ‘No, don’t do this,’ I said. But she narrowed her eyes and
bared her teeth. ‘You go!’ she growled.
“ ‘Morgan,’ I said to him; but he didn’t hear me, he couldn’t
hear me.
“ ‘Leave him be,’ said the woman ercely.
“ ‘But it’s stupid, what you’re doing; don’t you understand? This
woman’s dead!’ I pleaded with her.
“ ‘Louis,’ Claudia whispered, so that they couldn’t hear her, her
arm tightening around my neck beneath the fur of my hood. ‘Let
these people alone.’
“The others were moving into the room now, encircling the
table, their faces grim as they looked at us.
“ ‘But where do these vampires come from!’ I whispered.
‘You’ve searched your cemetery! If it’s vampires, where do they
hide from you? This woman can’t do you harm. Hunt your
vampires if you must.’
“ ‘By day,’ she said gravely, winking her eye and slowly
nodding her head. ‘By day. We get them, by day.’
“ ‘Where, out there in the graveyard, digging up the graves of
your own villagers?’
“She shook her head. ‘The ruins,’ she said. ‘It was always the
ruins. We were wrong. In my grandfather’s time it was the ruins,
and it is the ruins again. We’ll take them down stone by stone if
we have to. But you…you go now. Because if you don’t go, we’ll
drive you out there into that dark now!’
“And then out from behind her apron she drew her clenched st
with the stake in it and held it up in the ickering light of the
candle. ‘You hear me, you go!’ she said; and the men pressed in
close behind her, their mouths set, their eyes blazing in the light.
“ ‘Yes…’ I said to her. ‘Out there. I would prefer that. Out
there.’ And I swept past her, almost throwing her aside, seeing
them scuttle back to make way. I had my hand on the latch of the
inn door and slid it back with one quick gesture.
“ ‘No!’ cried the woman in her guttural German. ‘You’re mad!’
And she rushed up to me and then stared at the latch,
dumfounded. She threw her hands up against the rough boards of
the door. ‘Do you know what you do!’
“ ‘Where are the ruins?’ I asked her calmly. ‘How far? Do they
lie to the left of the road, or to the right?’
“ ‘No, no.’ She shook her head violently. I pried the door back
and felt the cold blast of air on my face. One of the women said
something sharp and angry from the wall, and one of the children
moaned in its sleep. ‘I’m going. I want one thing from you. Tell
me where the ruins lie, so I may stay clear of them. Tell me.’
“ ‘You don’t know, you don’t know,’ she said; and then I laid
my hand on her warm wrist and drew her slowly through the
door, her feet scraping on the boards, her eyes wild. The men
moved nearer but, as she stepped out against her will into the
night, they stopped. She tossed her head, her hair falling down
into her eyes, her eyes glaring at my hand and at my face. ‘Tell
me…’ I said.
“I could see she was staring not at me but at Claudia. Claudia
had turned towards her, and the light from the re was on her
face. The woman did not see the rounded cheeks nor the pursed
lips, I knew, but Claudia’s eyes, which were gazing at her with a
dark, demonic intelligence. The woman’s teeth bit down into the
esh of her lip.
“ ‘To the north or south?’
“ ‘To the north…’ she whispered.
“ ‘To the left or the right?’
“ ‘The left.’
“ ‘And how far?’
“Her hand struggled desperately. ‘Three miles,’ she gasped. And
I released her, so that she fell back against the door, her eyes wide
with fear and confusion. I had turned to go, but suddenly behind
me she cried out for me to wait. I turned to see she’d ripped the
crucix from the beam over her head, and she had it thrust out
towards me now. And out of the dark nightmare landscape of my
memory I saw Babette gazing at me as she had so many years ago,
saying those words, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan.’ But the woman’s
face was desperate. ‘Take it, please, in the name of God,’ she said.
‘And ride fast.’ And the door shut, leaving Claudia and me in total
darkness.”
“In minutes the tunnel of the night closed upon the weak lanterns
of our carriage, as if the village had never existed. We lurched
forward, around a bend, the springs creaking, the dim moon
revealing for an instant the pale outline of the mountains beyond
the pines. I could not stop thinking of Morgan, stop hearing his
voice. It was all tangled with my own horried anticipation of
meeting the thing which had killed Emily, the thing which was
unquestionably one of our own. But Claudia was in a frenzy. If
she could have driven the horses herself, she would have taken
the reins. Again and again she urged me to use the whip. She
struck savagely at the few low branches that dipped suddenly into
the lamps before our faces; and the arm that clung to my waist on
the rocking bench was as rm as iron.
“I remember the road turning sharply, the lanterns clattering,
and Claudia calling out over the wind: ‘There, Louis, do you see
it?’ And I jerked hard on the reins.
“She was on her knees, pressed against me, and the carriage
was swaying like a ship at sea.
“A great eecy cloud had released the moon, and high above us
loomed the dark outline of the tower. One long window showed
the pale sky beyond it. I sat there, clutching the bench, trying to
steady a motion that continued in my head as the carriage settled
on its springs. One of the horses whinnied. Then everything was
still.
“Claudia was saying. ‘Louis, come.…’
“I whispered something, a swift irrational negation. I had the
distinct and terrifying impression that Morgan was near to me,
talking to me in that low, impassioned way he’d pleaded with me
in the inn. Not a living creature stirred in the night around us.
There was only the wind and the soft rustling of the leaves.
“ ‘Do you think he knows we’re coming?’ I asked, my voice
unfamiliar to me over this wind. I was in that little parlor, as if
there were no escape from it, as if this dense forest were not real.
I think I shuddered. And then I felt Claudia’s hand very gently
touch the hand I lifted to my eyes. The thin pines were billowing
behind her and the rustle of the leaves grew louder, as if a great
mouth sucked the breeze and began a whirlwind. ‘They’ll bury her
at the crossroads? Is that what they’ll do? An Englishwoman!’ I
whispered.
“ ‘Would that I had your size…’ Claudia was saying. ‘And would
that you had my heart. Oh, Louis….’ And her head inclined to me
now, so like the attitude of the vampire bending to kiss that I
shrank back from her; but her lips only gently pressed my own,
nding a part there to suck the breath and let it ow back into me
as my arms enclosed her. ‘Let me lead you…’ she pleaded.
‘There’s no turning back now. Take me in your arms,’ she said,
‘and let me down, on the road.’
“But it seemed an eternity that I just sat there feeling her lips
on my face and on my eyelids. Then she moved, the softness of
her small body suddenly snatched from me, in a movement so
graceful and swift that she seemed now poised in the air beside
the carriage, her hand clutching mine for an instant, then letting
it go. And then I looked down to see her looking up at me,
standing on the road in the shuddering pool of light beneath the
lantern. She beckoned to me, as she stepped backwards, one small
boot behind the other. ‘Louis, come down…’ until she threatened
to vanish into the darkness. And in a second I’d unfastened the
lamp from its hook, and I stood beside her in the tall grass.
“ ‘Don’t you sense the danger?’ I whispered to her. ‘Can’t you
breathe it like the air?’ One of those quick, elusive smiles played
on her lips, as she turned towards the slope. The lantern pitched a
pathway through the rising forest. One small, white hand drew
the wool of her cape close, and she moved forward.
“ ‘Wait only for a moment.…’
“ ‘Fear’s your enemy…’ she answered, but she did not stop.
“She proceeded ahead of the light, feet sure, even as the tall
grass gave way gradually to low heaps of rubble, and the forest
thickened, and the distant tower vanished with the fading of the
moon and the great weaving of the branches overhead. Soon the
sound and scent of the horses died on the low wind. ‘Be en garde,’
Claudia whispered, as she moved, relentlessly, pausing only now
and again where the tangled vines and rock made it seem for
moments there was a shelter. But the ruins were ancient. Whether
plague or re or a foreign enemy had ravaged the town, we
couldn’t know. Only the monastery truly remained.
“Now something whispered in the dark that was like the wind
and the leaves, but it was neither. I saw Claudia’s back straighten,
saw the ash of her white palm as she slowed her step. Then I
knew it was water, winding its way slowly down the mountain,
and I saw it far ahead through the black trunks, a straight,
moonlit waterfall descending to a boiling pool below. Claudia
emerged silhouetted against the fall, her hand clutching a bare
root in the moist earth beside it; and now I saw her climbing hand
over hand up the overgrown cli, her arm trembling ever so
slightly, her small boots dangling, then digging in to hold, then
swinging free again. The water was cold, and it made the air
fragrant and light all around it, so that for a moment I rested.
Nothing stirred around me in the forest. I listened, senses quietly
separating the tune of the water from the tune of the leaves, but
nothing else stirred. And then it struck me gradually, like a chill
coming over my arms and my throat and nally my face, that the
night was too desolate, too lifeless. It was as if even the birds had
shunned this place, as well as all the myriad creatures that should
have been moving about the banks of this stream. But Claudia,
above me on the ledge, was reaching for the lantern, her cape
brushing my face. I lifted it, so that suddenly she sprang into
light, like an eerie cherub. She put her hand out for me as if,
despite her small size, she could help me up the embankment. In a
moment we were moving on again, over the stream, up the
mountain. ‘Do you sense it?’ I whispered. ‘It’s too still.’
“But her hand tightened on mine, as if to say, ‘Quiet.’ The hill
was growing steeper, and the quiet was unnerving. I tried to stare
at the limits of the light, to see each new bark as it loomed before
us. Something did move, and I reached for Claudia, almost pulling
her sharply near to me. But it was only a reptile, shooting through
the leaves with a whip of his tail. The leaves settled. But Claudia
moved back against me, under the folds of my cape, a hand rmly
clasping the cloth of my coat; and she seemed to propel me
forward, my cape falling over the loose fabric of her own.
“Soon the scent of the water was gone, and when the moon
shone clear for an instant I could see right ahead of us what
appeared to be a break in the woods. Claudia rmly clasped the
lantern and shut its metal door. I moved to stop this, my hand
struggling with hers; but then she said to me quietly, ‘Close your
eyes for an instant, and then open them slowly. And when you do,
you will see it.’
“A chill rose over me as I did this, during which I held fast to
her shoulder. But then I opened my eyes and saw beyond the
distant bark of the trees the long, low walls of the monastery and
the high square top of the massive tower. Far beyond it, above an
immense black valley, gleamed the snow-capped peaks of the
mountains. ‘Come,’ she said to me, ‘quiet, as if your body has no
weight.’ And she started without hesitation right towards those
walls, right towards whatever might have been waiting in their
shelter.
“In moments we had found the gap that would admit us, the
great opening that was blacker still than the walls around it, the
vines encrusting its edges as if to hold the stones in place. High
above, through the open roof, the damp smell of the stones strong
in my nostrils, I saw, beyond the streaks of clouds, a faint
sprinkling of stars. A great staircase moved upward, from corner
to corner, all the way to the narrow windows that looked out
upon the valley. And beneath the rst rise of the stair, out of the
gloom emerged the vast, dark opening to the monastery’s
remaining rooms.
“Claudia was still now, as if she had become the stones. In the
damp enclosure not even the soft tendrils of her hair moved. She
was listening. And then I was listening with her. There was only
the low backdrop of the wind. She moved, slowly, deliberately,
and with one pointed foot gradually cleared a space in the moist
earth in front of her. I could see a at stone there, and it sounded
hollow as she gently tapped it with her heel. Then I could see the
broad size of it and how it rose at one distant corner; and an
image came to mind, dreadful in its sharpness, of that band of
men and women from the village surrounding the stone, raising it
with a giant lever. Claudia’s eyes moved over the staircase and
then xed on the crumbling doorway beneath it. The moon shone
for an instant through a lofty window. Then Claudia moved, so
suddenly that she stood beside me without having made a sound.
‘Do you hear it?’ she whispered. ‘Listen.’
“It was so low no mortal could have heard it. And it did not
come from the ruins. It came from far o, not the long,
meandering way that we had come up the slope, but another way,
up the spine of the hill, directly from the village. Just a rustling
now, a scraping, but it was steady; and then slowly the round
tramping of a foot began to distinguish itself. Claudia’s hand
tightened on mine, and with a gentle pressure she moved me
silently beneath the slope of the stairway. I could see the folds of
her dress heave slightly beneath the edge of her cape. The tramp
of the feet grew louder, and I began to sense that one step
preceded the other very sharply, the second dragging slowly
across the earth. It was a limping step, drawing nearer and nearer
over the low whistling of the wind. My own heart beat hard
against my chest, and I felt the veins in my temples tighten, a
tremor passing through my limbs, so that I could feel the fabric of
my shirt against me, the sti cut of the collar, the very scraping of
the buttons against my cape.
“Then a faint scent came with the wind. It was the scent of
blood, at once arousing me, against my will, the warm, sweet
scent of human blood, blood that was spilling, owing; and then I
sensed the smell of living esh and I heard in time with the feet a
dry, hoarse breathing. But with it came another sound, faint and
intermingled with the rst, as the feet tramped closer and closer
to the walls, the sound of yet another creature’s halting, strained
breath. And I could hear the heart of that creature, beating
irregularly, a fearful throbbing; but beneath that was another
heart, a steady, pulsing heart growing louder and louder, a heart
as strong as my own! Then, in the jagged gap through which we’d
come, I saw him.
“His great, huge shoulder emerged rst and one long, loose arm
and hand, the ngers curved; then I saw his head. Over his other
shoulder he was carrying a body. In the broken doorway he
straightened and shifted the weight and stared directly into the
darkness towards us. Every muscle in me became iron as I looked
at him, saw the outline of his head looming there against the sky.
But nothing of his face was visible except the barest glint of the
moon on his eye as if it were a fragment of glass. Then I saw it
glint on his buttons and heard them rustle as his arm swung free
again and one long leg bent as he moved forward and proceeded
into the tower right towards us.
“I held fast to Claudia, ready in an instant to shove her behind
me, to step forward to meet him. But then I saw with
astonishment that his eyes did not see me as I saw him, and he
was trudging under the weight of the body he carried towards the
monastery door. The moon fell now on his bowed head, on a mass
of wavy black hair that touched his bent shoulder, and on the full
black sleeve of his coat. I saw something about his coat; the ap
of it was badly torn and the sleeve appeared to be ripped from the
seam. I almost fancied I could see his esh through the shoulder.
The human in his arms stirred now, and moaned miserably. And
the gure stopped for a moment and appeared to stroke the
human with his hand. And at that moment I stepped forward from
the wall and went towards him.
“No words passed my lips: I knew none to say. I only knew that
I moved into the light of the moon before him and that his dark,
wavy head rose with a jerk, and that I saw his eyes.
“For one full instant he looked at me, and I saw the light
shining in those eyes and then glinting on two sharp canine teeth;
and then a low strangled cry seemed to rise from the depths of his
throat which, for a second, I thought to be my own. The human
crashed to the stones, a shuddering moan escaping his lips. And
the vampire lunged at me, that strangled cry rising again as the
stench of fetid breath rose in my nostrils and the clawlike ngers
cut into the very fur of my cape. I fell backwards, my head
cracking against the wall, my hands grabbing at his head,
clutching a mass of tangled lth that was his hair. At once the
wet, rotting fabric of his coat ripped in my grasp, but the arm that
held me was like iron; and, as I struggled to pull the head
backwards, the fangs touched the esh of my throat. Claudia
screamed behind him. Something hit his head hard, which
stopped him suddenly; and then he was hit again. He turned as if
to strike her a blow, and I sent my st against his face as
powerfully as I could. Again a stone struck him as she darted
away, and I threw my full weight against him and felt his crippled
leg buckling. I remember pounding his head over and over, my
ngers all but pulling that lthy hair out by the roots, his fangs
projected towards me, his hands scratching, clawing at me. We
rolled over and over, until I pinned him down again and the moon
shone full on his face. And I realized, through my frantic sobbing
breaths, what it was I held in my arms. The two huge eyes bulged
from naked sockets and two small, hideous holes made up his
nose; only a putrid, leathery esh enclosed his skull, and the rank,
rotting rags that covered his frame were thick with earth and
slime and blood. I was battling a mindless, animated corpse. But
no more.
“From above him, a sharp stone fell full on his forehead, and a
fount of blood gushed from between his eyes. He struggled, but
another stone crashed with such force I heard the bones shatter.
Blood seeped out beneath the matted hair, soaking into the stones
and grass. The chest throbbed beneath me, but the arms
shuddered and grew still. I drew up, my throat knotted, my heart
burning, every ber of my body aching from the struggle. For a
moment the great tower seemed to tilt, but then it righted itself. I
lay against the wall, staring at the thing, the blood rushing in my
ears. Gradually I realized that Claudia knelt on his chest, that she
was probing the mass of hair and bone that had been his head.
She was scattering the fragments of his skull. We had met the
European vampire, the creature of the Old World. He was dead.”
“For a long time I lay on the broad stairway, oblivious to the thick
earth that covered it, my head feeling very cool against the earth,
just looking at him. Claudia stood at his feet, hands hanging
limply at her sides. I saw her eyes close for an instant, two tiny
lids that made her face like a small, moonlit white statue as she
stood there. And then her body began to rock very slowly.
‘Claudia,’ I called to her. She awakened. She was gaunt such as I
had seldom seen her. She pointed to the human who lay far across
the oor of the tower near the wall. He was still motionless, but I
knew that he was not dead. I’d forgotten him completely, my
body aching as it was, my senses still clouded with the stench of
the bleeding corpse. But now I saw the man. And in some part of
my mind I knew what his fate would be, and I cared nothing for
it. I knew it was only an hour at most before dawn.
“ ‘He’s moving,’ she said to me. And I tried to rise o the steps.
Better that he not wake, better that he never wake at all, I wanted
to say; she was walking towards him, passing indierently the
dead thing that had nearly killed us both. I saw her back and the
man stirring in front of her, his foot twisting in the grass. I don’t
know what I expected to see as I drew nearer, what terried
peasant or farmer, what miserable wretch that had already seen
the face of that thing that had brought it here. And for a moment
I did not realize who it was that lay there, that it was Morgan,
whose pale face showed now in the moon, the marks of the
vampire on his throat, his blue eyes staring mute and
expressionless before him.
“Suddenly they widened as I drew close to him. ‘Louis!’ he
whispered in astonishment, his lips moving as if he were trying to
frame words but could not. ‘Louis…’ he said again; and then I saw
he was smiling. A dry, rasping sound came from him as he
struggled to his knees, and he reached out for me. His blanched,
contorted face strained as the sound died in his throat, and he
nodded desperately, his red hair loose and dishevelled, falling into
his eyes. I turned and ran from him. Claudia shot past me,
gripping me by the arm. ‘Do you see the color of the sky!’ she
hissed at me. Morgan fell forward on his hands behind her.
‘Louis,’ he called out again, the light gleaming in his eyes. He
seemed blind to the ruins, blind to the night, blind to everything
but a face he recognized, that one word again issuing from his
lips. I put my hands to my ears, backing away from him. His hand
was bloody now as he lifted it. I could smell the blood as well as
see it. And Claudia could smell it, too.
“Swiftly she descended on him, pushing him down against the
stones, her white ngers moving through his red hair. He tried to
raise his head. His outstretched hands made a frame about her
face, and then suddenly he began to stroke her yellow curls. She
sank her teeth, and the hands dropped helpless at his side.
“I was at the edge of the forest when she caught up with me.
‘You must go to him, take him,’ she commanded. I could smell the
blood on her lips, see the warmth in her cheeks. Her wrist burned
against me, yet I did not move. ‘Listen to me, Louis,’ she said, her
voice at once desperate and angry. ‘I left him for you, but he’s
dying…there’s no time.’
“I swung her up into my arms and started the long descent. No
need for caution, no need for stealth, no preternatural host
waiting. The door to the secrets of eastern Europe was shut
against us. I was plowing through the dark to the road. ‘Will you
listen to me,’ she cried out. But I went on in spite of her, her
hands clutching at my coat, my hair. ‘Do you see the sky, do you
see it!’ she railed.
“She was all but sobbing against my breast as I splashed
through the icy stream and ran headlong in search of the lantern
at the road.
“The sky was a dark blue when I found the carriage. ‘Give me
the crucix,’ I shouted to Claudia as I cracked the whip. ‘There’s
only one place to go.’ She was thrown against me as the carriage
rocked into its turn and headed for the village.
“I had the eeriest feeling then as I could see the mist rising
amongst the dark brown trees. The air was cold and fresh and the
birds had begun. It was as if the sun were rising. Yet I did not
care. And yet I knew that it was not rising, that there was still
time. It was a marvellous, quieting feeling. The scrapes and cuts
burned my esh and my heart ached with hunger, but my head
felt marvellously light. Until I saw the gray shapes of the inn and
the steeple of the church; they were too clear. And the stars above
were fading fast.
“In a moment I was hammering on the door of the inn. As it
opened, I put my hood up around my face tightly and held
Claudia beneath my cape in a bundle. ‘Your village is rid of the
vampire!’ I said to the woman, who stared at me in astonishment.
I was clutching the crucix which she’d given me. ‘Thanks be to
God he’s dead. You’ll nd the remains in the tower. Tell this to
your people at once.’ I pushed past her into the inn.
“The gathering was roused into commotion instantly, but I
insisted that I was tired beyond endurance. I must pray and rest.
They were to get my chest from the carriage and bring it to a
decent room where I might sleep. But a message was to come for
me from the bishop at Varna and for this, and this only, was I to
be awakened. ‘Tell the good father when he arrives that the
vampire is dead, and then give him food and drink and have him
wait for me,’ I said. The woman was crossing herself. ‘You
understand,’ I said to her, as I hurried towards the stairs, ‘I
couldn’t reveal my mission to you until after the vampire had
been….’ ‘Yes, yes,’ she said to me. ‘But you are not a priest…the
child!’ ‘No, only too well-versed in these matters. The Unholy One
is no match for me,’ I said to her. I stopped. The door of the little
parlor stood open, with nothing but a white square of cloth on the
oak table. ‘Your friend,’ she said to me, and she looked at the
oor. ‘He rushed out into the night…he was mad.’ I only nodded.
“I could hear them shouting when I shut the door of the room.
They seemed to be running in all directions; and then came the
sharp sound of the church bell in the rapid peal of alarm. Claudia
had slipped down from my arms, and she was staring at me
gravely as I bolted the door. Very slowly I unlatched the shutter
of the window. An icy light seeped into the room. Still she
watched me. Then I felt her at my side. I looked down to see she
was holding out her hand to me. ‘Here,’ she said. She must have
seen I was confused. I felt so weak that her face was shimmering
as I looked at it, the blue of her eyes dancing on her white cheeks.
“ ‘Drink,’ she whispered, drawing nearer. ‘Drink.’ And she held
the soft, tender esh of the wrist towards me. ‘No, I know what to
do; haven’t I done it in the past?’ I said to her. It was she who
bolted the window tight, latched the heavy door. I remember
kneeling by the small grate and feeling the ancient panelling. It
was rotten behind the varnished surface, and it gave under my
ngers. Suddenly I saw my st go through it and felt the sharp jab
of splinters in my wrist. And then I remember feeling in the dark
and catching hold of something warm and pulsing. A rush of cold,
damp air hit my face and I saw a darkness rising about me, cool
and damp as if this air were a silent water that seeped through the
broken wall and lled the room. The room was gone. I was
drinking from a never-ending stream of warm blood that owed
down my throat and through my pulsing heart and through my
veins, so that my skin warmed against this cool, dark water. And
now the pulse of the blood I drank slackened, and all my body
cried out for it not to slacken, my heart pounding, trying to make
that heart pound with it. I felt myself rising, as if I were oating
in the darkness, and then the darkness, like the heartbeat, began
to fade. Something glimmered in my swoon; it shivered ever so
slightly with the pounding of feet on the stairs, on the
oorboards, the rolling of wheels and horses’ hooves on the earth,
and it gave o a tinkling sound as it shivered. It had a small
wooden frame around it, and in that frame there emerged,
through the glimmer, the gure of a man. He was familiar. I knew
his long, slender build, his black, wavy hair. Then I saw that his
green eyes were gazing at me. And in his teeth, in his teeth, he
was clutching something huge and soft and brown, which he
pressed tightly with both his hands. It was a rat. A great
loathsome brown rat he held, its feet poised, its mouth agape, its
great curved tail frozen in the air. Crying out, he threw it down
and stared aghast, blood owing from his open mouth.
“A searing light hit my eyes. I struggled to open them against it,
and the entire room was glowing. Claudia was right in front of
me. She was not a tiny child, but someone much larger who drew
me forward towards her with both hands. She was on her knees,
and my arms encircled her waist. Then darkness descended, and I
had her folded against me. The lock slid into place. Numbness
came over my limbs, and then the paralysis of oblivion.”
AND THAT WAS HOW it was throughout Transylvania and Hungary and
Bulgaria, and through all those countries where the peasants
know that the living dead walk, and the legends of the vampires
abound. In every village where we did encounter the vampire, it
was the same.”
“A mindless corpse?” the boy asked.
“Always,” said the vampire. “When we found these creatures at
all. I remember a handful at most. Sometimes we only watched
them from a distance, all too familiar with their wagging, bovine
heads, their haggard shoulders, their rotted, ragged clothing. In
one hamlet it was a woman, only dead for perhaps a few months;
the villagers had glimpsed her and knew her by name. It was she
who gave us the only hope we were to experience after the
monster in Transylvania, and that hope came to nothing. She ed
from us through the forest and we ran after her, reaching out for
her long, black hair. Her white burial gown was soaked with dried
blood, her ngers caked with the dirt of the grave. And her eyes…
they were mindless, empty, two pools that reected the moon. No
secrets, no truths, only despair.”
“But what were these creatures? Why were they like this?”
asked the boy, his lips grimacing with disgust. “I don’t
understand. How could they be so dierent from you and Claudia,
yet exist?”
“I had my theories. So did Claudia. But the main thing which I
had then was despair. And in despair the recurring fear that we
had killed the only other vampire like us, Lestat. Yet it seemed
unthinkable. Had he possessed the wisdom of a sorcerer, the
powers of a witch…I might have come to understand that he had
somehow managed to wrest a conscious life from the same forces
that governed these monsters. But he was only Lestat, as I’ve
described him to you: devoid of mystery, nally, his limits as
familiar to me in those months in eastern Europe as his charms. I
wanted to forget him, and yet it seemed I thought of him always.
It was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. And
sometimes I found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he
had only just left the room and the ring of his voice were still
there. And somehow there was a disturbing comfort in that, and,
despite myself, I’d envision his face—not as it had been the last
night in the re, but on other nights, that last evening he spent
with us at home, his hand playing idly with the keys of the spinet,
his head tilted to one side. A sickness rose in me more wretched
than anguish when I saw what my dreams were doing. I wanted
him alive! In the dark nights of eastern Europe, Lestat was the
only vampire I’d found.
“But Claudia’s waking thoughts were of a far more practical
nature. Over and over, she had me recount that night in the hotel
in New Orleans when she’d become a vampire, and over and over
she searched the process for some clue to why these things we
met in the country graveyards had no mind. What if, after Lestat’s
infusion of blood, she’d been put in a grave, closed up in it until
the preternatural drive for blood caused her to break the stone
door of the vault that held her, what then would her mind have
been, starved, as it were, to the breaking point? Her body might
have saved itself when no mind remained. And through the world
she would have blundered, ravaging where she could, as we saw
these creatures do. That was how she explained them. But what
had fathered them, how had they begun? That was what she
couldn’t explain and what gave her hope of discovery when I,
from sheer exhaustion, had none. ‘They spawn their own kind, it’s
obvious, but where does it begin?’ she asked. And then,
somewhere near the outskirts of Vienna, she put the question to
me which had never before passed her lips. Why could I not do
what Lestat had done with both of us? Why could I not make
another vampire? I don’t know why at rst I didn’t even
understand her, except that in loathing what I was with every
impulse in me I had a particular fear of that question, which was
almost worse than any other. You see, I didn’t understand
something strong in myself. Loneliness had caused me to think on
that very possibility years before, when I had fallen under the
spell of Babette Freniere. But I held it locked inside of me like an
unclean passion. I shunned mortal life after her. I killed strangers.
And the Englishman Morgan, because I knew him, was as safe
from my fatal embrace as Babette had been. They both caused me
too much pain. Death I couldn’t think of giving them. Life in
death—it was monstrous. I turned away from Claudia. I wouldn’t
answer her. But angry as she was, wretched as was her
impatience, she could not stand this turning away. And she drew
near to me, comforting me with her hands and her eyes as if she
were my loving daughter.
“ ‘Don’t think on it, Louis,’ she said later, when we were
comfortably situated in a small suburban hotel. I was standing at
the window, looking at the distant glow of Vienna, so eager for
that city, its civilization, its sheer size. The night was clear and
the haze of the city was on the sky. ‘Let me put your conscience at
ease, though I’ll never know precisely what it is,’ she said, into my
ear, her hand stroking my hair.
“ ‘Do that, Claudia,’ I answered her. ‘Put it at ease. Tell me that
you’ll never speak to me of making vampires again.’
“ ‘I want no orphans such as ourselves!’ she said, all too quickly.
My words annoyed her. My feeling annoyed her. ‘I want answers,
knowledge,’ she said. ‘But tell me, Louis, what makes you so
certain that you’ve never done this without your knowing it?’
“Again there was that deliberate obtuseness in me. I must look
at her as if I didn’t know the meaning of her words. I wanted her
to be silent and to be near me, and for us to be in Vienna. I drew
her hair back and let my ngertips touch her long lashes and
looked away at the light.
“ ‘After all, what does it take to make those creatures?’ she went
on. ‘Those vagabond monsters? How many drops of your blood
intermingled with a man’s blood…and what kind of heart to
survive that rst attack?’
“I could feel her watching my face, and I stood there, my arms
folded, my back to the side of the window, looking out.
“ ‘That pale-faced Emily, that miserable Englishman…’ she said,
oblivious to the icker of pain in my face. ‘Their hearts were
nothing, and it was the fear of death as much as the drawing of
blood that killed them. The idea killed them. But what of the
hearts that survive? Are you sure you haven’t fathered a league of
monsters who, from time to time, struggled vainly and
instinctively to follow in your footsteps? What was their life span,
these orphans you left behind you—a day there, a week here,
before the sun burnt them to ashes or some mortal victim cut
them down?’
“ ‘Stop it,’ I begged her. ‘If you knew how completely I envision
everything you describe, you would not describe it. I tell you it’s
never happened! Lestat drained me to the point of death to make
me a vampire. And gave back all that blood mingled with his
own. That is how it was done!’
“She looked away from me, and then it seemed she was looking
down at her hands. I think I heard her sigh, but I wasn’t certain.
And then her eyes moved over me, slowly, up and down, before
they nally met mine. Then it seemed she smiled. ‘Don’t be
frightened of my fancy,’ she said softly. ‘After all, the nal
decision will always rest with you. Is that not so?’
“ ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. And a cold laughter erupted from
her as she turned away.
“ ‘Can you picture it?’ she said, so softly I scarcely heard. ‘A
coven of children? That is all I could provide.…’
“ ‘Claudia,’ I murmured.
“ ‘Rest easy,’ she said abruptly, her voice still low. ‘I tell you
that as much as I hated Lestat…’ She stopped.
“ ‘Yes…’ I whispered. ‘Yes….’
“ ‘As much as I hated him, with him we were…complete.’ She
looked at me, her eyelids quivering, as if the slight rise in her
voice had disturbed her even as it had disturbed me.
“ ‘No, only you were complete…’ I said to her. ‘Because there
were two of us, one on either side of you, from the beginning.’
“I thought I saw her smile then, but I was not certain. She
bowed her head, but I could see her eyes moving beneath the
lashes, back and forth, back and forth. Then she said, ‘The two of
you at my side. Do you picture that as you say it, as you picture
everything else?’
“One night, long gone by, was as material to me as if I were in
it still, but I didn’t tell her. She was desperate in that night,
running away from Lestat, who had urged her to kill a woman in
the street from whom she’d backed o, clearly alarmed. I was
sure the woman had resembled her mother. Finally she’d escaped
us entirely, but I’d found her in the armoire, beneath the jackets
and coats, clinging to her doll. And, carrying her to her crib, I sat
beside her and sang to her, and she stared at me as she clung to
that doll, as if trying blindly and mysteriously to calm a pain she
herself did not begin to understand. Can you picture it, this
splendid domesticity, dim lamps, the vampire father singing to
the vampire daughter? Only the doll had a human face, only the
doll.
“ ‘But we must get away from here!’ said the present Claudia
suddenly, as though the thought had just taken shape in her mind
with a special urgency. She had her hand to her ear, as if
clutching it against some awful sound. ‘From the roads behind us,
from what I see in your eyes now, because I give voice to
thoughts which are nothing more to me than plain
considerations…’
“ ‘Forgive me,’ I said as gently as I could, withdrawing slowly
from that long-ago room, that rued crib, that frightened
monster child and monster voice. And Lestat, where was Lestat? A
match striking in the other room, a shadow leaping suddenly into
life, as light and dark come alive where there was only darkness.
“ ‘No, you forgive me…’ she was saying to me now, in this little
hotel room near the rst capital of western Europe. ‘No, we
forgive each other. But we don’t forgive him; and, without him,
you see what things are between us.’
“ ‘Only now because we are tired, and things are dreary…’ I
said to her and to myself, because there was no one else in the
world to whom I could speak.
“ ‘Ah, yes; and that is what must end. I tell you, I begin to
understand that we have done it all wrong from the start. We
must bypass Vienna. We need our language, our people. I want to
go directly now to Paris.’ ”
PART III
I THINK the very name of Paris brought a rush of pleasure to me
that was extraordinary, a relief so near to well-being that I was
amazed, not only that I could feel it, but that I’d so nearly
forgotten it.
“I wonder if you can understand what it meant. My expression
can’t convey it now, for what Paris means to me is very dierent
from what it meant then, in those days, at that hour; but still,
even now, to think of it, I feel something akin to that happiness.
And I’ve more reason now than ever to say that happiness is not
what I will ever know, or will ever deserve to know. I am not so
much in love with happiness. Yet the name Paris makes me feel it.
“Mortal beauty often makes me ache, and mortal grandeur can
ll me with that longing I felt so hopelessly in the Mediterranean
Sea. But Paris, Paris drew me close to her heart, so I forgot myself
entirely. Forgot the damned and questing preternatural thing that
doted on mortal skin and mortal clothing. Paris overwhelmed,
and lightened and rewarded more richly than any promise.
“It was the mother of New Orleans, understand that rst; it had
given New Orleans its life, its rst populace; and it was what New
Orleans had for so long tried to be. But New Orleans, though
beautiful and desperately alive, was desperately fragile. There was
something forever savage and primitive there, something that
threatened the exotic and sophisticated life both from within and
without. Not an inch of those wooden streets nor a brick of the
crowded Spanish houses had not been bought from the erce
wilderness that forever surrounded the city, ready to engulf it.
Hurricanes, oods, fevers, the plague—and the damp of the
Louisiana climate itself worked tirelessly on every hewn plank or
stone facade, so that New Orleans seemed at all times like a
dream in the imagination of her striving populace, a dream held
intact at every second by a tenacious, though unconscious,
collective will.
“But Paris, Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself,
hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of
Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals,
her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets—as
vast and indestructible as nature itself. All was embraced by her,
by her volatile and enchanted populace thronging the galleries,
the theaters, the cafes, giving birth over and over to genius and
sanctity, philosophy and war, frivolity and the nest art; so it
seemed that if all the world outside her were to sink into
darkness, what was ne, what was beautiful, what was essential
might there still come to its nest ower. Even the majestic trees
that graced and sheltered her streets were attuned to her—and the
waters of the Seine, contained and beautiful as they wound
through her heart; so that the earth on that spot, so shaped by
blood and consciousness, had ceased to be the earth and had
become Paris.
“We were alive again. We were in love, and so euphoric was I
after those hopeless nights of wandering in eastern Europe that I
yielded completely when Claudia moved us into the Hôtel Saint-
Gabriel on the Boulevard des Capucines. It was rumored to be one
of the largest hotels in Europe, its immense rooms dwarng the
memory of our old town house, while at the same time recalling it
with a comfortable splendor. We were to have one of the nest
suites. Our windows looked out over the gas-lit boulevard itself
where, in the early evening, the asphalt sidewalks teemed with
strollers and an endless stream of carriages owed past, taking
lavishly dressed ladies and their gentlemen to the Opéra or the
Opéra Comique, the ballet, the theaters, the balls and receptions
without end at the Tuileries.
“Claudia put her reasons for expense to me gently and logically,
but I could see that she became impatient ordering everything
through me; it was wearing for her. The hotel, she said, quietly
aorded us complete freedom, our nocturnal habits going
unnoticed in the continual press of European tourists, our rooms
immaculately maintained by an anonymous sta, while the
immense price we paid guaranteed our privacy and our security.
But there was more to it than that. There was a feverish purpose
to her buying.
“ ‘This is my world,’ she explained to me as she sat in a small
velvet chair before the open balcony, watching the long row of
broughams stopping one by one before the hotel doors. ‘I must
have it as I like,’ she said, as if speaking to herself. And so it was
as she liked, stunning wallpaper of rose and gold, an abundance
of damask and velvet furniture, embroidered pillows and silk
trappings for the fourposter bed. Dozens of roses appeared daily
for the marble mantels and the inlaid tables, crowding the
curtained alcove of her dressing room, reected endlessly in tilted
mirrors. And nally she crowded the high French windows with a
veritable garden of camellia and fern. ‘I miss the owers; more
than anything else I miss the owers,’ she mused. And sought
after them even in the paintings which we brought from the shops
and the galleries, magnicent canvases such as I’d never seen in
New Orleans—from the classically executed lifelike bouquets,
tempting you to reach for the petals that fell on a three-
dimensional tablecloth, to a new and disturbing style in which the
colors seemed to blaze with such intensity they destroyed the old
lines, the old solidity, to make a vision like to those states when
I’m nearest my delirium and owers grow before my eyes and
crackle like the ames of lamps. Paris owed into these rooms.
“I found myself at home there, again forsaking dreams of
ethereal simplicity for what another’s gentle insistence had given
me, because the air was sweet like the air of our courtyard in the
Rue Royale, and all was alive with a shocking profusion of gas
light that rendered even the ornate lofty ceilings devoid of
shadows. The light raced on the gilt curlicues, ickered in the
baubles of the chandeliers. Darkness did not exist. Vampires did
not exist.
“And even bent as I was on my quest, it was sweet to think that,
for an hour, father and daughter climbed into the cabriolet from
such civilized luxury only to ride along the banks of the Seine,
over the bridge into the Latin Quarter to roam those darker,
narrower streets in search of history, not victims. And then to
return to the ticking clock and the brass andirons and the playing
cards laid out upon the table. Books of poets, the program from a
play, and all around the soft humming of the vast hotel, distant
violins, a woman talking in a rapid, animated voice above the
zinging of a hairbrush, and a man high above on the top oor
repeating over and over to the night air, ‘I understand, I am just
beginning, I am just beginning to understand….’
“ ‘Is it as you would have it?’ Claudia asked, perhaps just to let
me know she hadn’t forgotten me, for she was quiet now for
hours; no talk of vampires. But something was wrong. It was not
the old serenity, the pensiveness that was recollection. There was
a brooding there, a smoldering dissatisfaction. And though it
would vanish from her eyes when I would call to her or answer
her, anger seemed to settle very near the surface.
“ ‘Oh, you know how I would have it,’ I answered, persisting in
the myth of my own will. ‘Some garret near the Sorbonne, near
enough to the noise of the Rue St. Michel, far enough away. But I
would mainly have it as you would have it.’ And I could see her
warmed, but looking past me, as if to say, ‘You have no remedy;
don’t draw too near; don’t ask of me what I ask of you: are you
content?’
“My memory is too clear; too sharp; things should wear at the
edges, and what is unresolved should soften. So, scenes are near
my heart like pictures in lockets, yet monstrous pictures no artist
or camera would ever catch; and over and over I would see
Claudia at the piano’s edge that last night when Lestat was
playing, preparing to die, her face when he was taunting her, that
contortion that at once became a mask; attention might have
saved his life, if, in fact, he were dead at all.
“Something was collecting in Claudia, revealing itself slowly to
the most unwilling witness in the world. She had a new passion
for rings and bracelets children did not wear. Her jaunty, straight-
backed walk was not a child’s, and often she entered small
boutiques ahead of me and pointed a commanding nger at the
perfume or the gloves she would then pay for herself. I was never
far away, and always uncomfortable—not because I feared
anything in this vast city, but because I feared her. She’d always
been the ‘lost child’ to her victims, the ‘orphan,’ and now it
seemed she would be something else, something wicked and
shocking to the passers-by who succumbed to her. But this was
often private; I was left for an hour haunting the carved edices
of Notre-Dame, or sitting at the edge of a park in the carriage.
“And then one night, when I awoke on the lavish bed in the
suite of the hotel, my book crunched uncomfortably under me, I
found her gone altogether. I didn’t dare ask the attendants if
they’d seen her. It was our practice to spirit past them; we had no
name. I searched the corridors for her, the side streets, even the
ballroom, where some almost inexplicable dread came over me at
the thought of her there alone. But then I nally saw her coming
through the side doors of the lobby, her hair beneath her bonnet
brim sparkling from the light rain, the child rushing as if on a
mischievous escapade, lighting the faces of doting men and
women as she mounted the grand staircase and passed me, as if
she hadn’t seen me at all. An impossibility, a strange graceful
slight.
“I shut the door behind me just as she was taking o her cape,
and, in a urry of golden raindrops, she shook it, shook her hair.
The ribbons crushed from the bonnet fell loose and I felt a
palpable relief to see the childish dress, those ribbons, and
something wonderfully comforting in her arms, a small china doll.
Still she said nothing to me; she was fussing with the doll. Jointed
somehow with hooks or wire beneath its ouncing dress, its tiny
feet tinkled like a bell. ‘It’s a lady doll,’ she said, looking up at me.
‘See? A lady doll.’ She put it on the dresser.
“ ‘So it is,’ I whispered.
“ ‘A woman made it,’ she said. ‘She makes baby dolls, all the
same, baby dolls, a shop of baby dolls, until I said to her, “I want
a lady doll.’ ”
“It was taunting, mysterious. She sat there now with the wet
strands of hair streaking her high forehead, intent on that doll.
‘Do you know why she made it for me?’ she asked. I was wishing
now the room had shadows, that I could retreat from the warm
circle of the superuous re into some darkness, that I wasn’t
sitting on the bed as if on a lighted stage, seeing her before me
and in her mirrors, pued sleeves and pued sleeves.
“ ‘Because you are a beautiful child and she wanted to make
you happy,’ I said, my voice small and foreign to myself.
“She was laughing soundlessly. ‘A beautiful child,’ she said,
glancing up at me. ‘Is that what you still think I am?’ And her face
went dark as again she played with the doll, her ngers pushing
the tiny crocheted neckline down toward the china breasts. ‘Yes, I
resemble her baby dolls, I am her baby dolls. You should see her
working in that shop; bent on her dolls, each with the same face,
lips.’ Her nger touched her own lip. Something seemed to shift
suddenly, something within the very walls of the room itself, and
the mirrors trembled with her image as if the earth had sighed
beneath the foundations. Carriages rumbled in the streets; but
they were too far away. And then I saw what her still childish
gure was doing: in one hand she held the doll, the other to her
lips; and the hand that held the doll was crushing it, crushing it
and popping it so it bobbed and broke in a heap of glass that fell
now from her open, bloody hand onto the carpet. She wrung the
tiny dress to make a shower of littering particles as I averted my
eyes, only to see her in the tilted mirror over the re, see her eyes
scanning me from my feet to the top of my head. She moved
through that mirror towards me and drew close on the bed.
“ ‘Why do you look away, why don’t you look at me?’ she
asked, her voice very smooth, very like a silver bell. But then she
laughed softly, a woman’s laugh, and said, ‘Did you think I’d be
your daughter forever? Are you the father of fools, the fool of
fathers?’
“ ‘Your tone is unkind with me,’ I answered.
“ ‘Hmmm…unkind.’ I think she nodded. She was a blaze in the
corner of my eye, blue ames, golden ames.
“ ‘And what do they think of you,’ I asked as gently as I could,
‘out there?’ I gestured to the open window.
“ ‘Many things.’ She smiled. ‘Many things. Men are marvellous
at explanations. Have you see the “little people” in the parks, the
circuses, the freaks that men pay money to laugh at?’
“ ‘I was a sorcerer’s apprentice only!’ I burst out suddenly,
despite myself. ‘Apprentice!’ I said. I wanted to touch her, to
stroke her hair, but I sat there afraid of her, her anger like a
match about to kindle.
“Again she smiled, and then she drew my hand into her lap and
covered it as best she could with her own. ‘Apprentice, yes,’ she
laughed. ‘But tell me one thing, one thing from that lofty height.
What was it like…making love?’
“I was walking away from her before I meant to, I was
searching like a dim-witted mortal man for cape and gloves. ‘You
don’t remember?’ she asked with perfect calm, as I put my hand
on the brass door handle.
“I stopped, feeling her eyes on my back, ashamed, and then I
turned around and made as if to think, Where am I going, what
shall I do, why do I stand here?
“ ‘It was something hurried,’ I said, trying now to meet her
eyes. How perfectly, coldly blue they were. How earnest. ‘And…it
was seldom savored…something acute that was quickly lost. I
think that it was the pale shadow of killing.’
“ ‘Ahhh…’ she said. ‘Like hurting you as I do now…that is also
the pale shadow of killing.’
“ ‘Yes, madam,’ I said to her. ‘I am inclined to believe that is
correct.’ And bowing swiftly, I bade her good-night.”
“It was a long time after I’d left her that I slowed my pace. I’d
crossed the Seine. I wanted darkness. To hide from her and the
feelings that welled up in me, and the great consuming fear that I
was utterly inadequate to make her happy, or to make myself
happy by pleasing her.
“I would have given the world to please her, the world we now
possessed, which seemed at once empty and eternal. Yet I was
injured by her words and by her eyes, and no amount of
explanations to her—which passed through and through my mind
now, even forming on my lips in desperate whispers as I left the
Rue St. Michel and went deeper and deeper into the older, darker
streets of the Latin Quarter—no amount of explanations seemed
to soothe what I imagined to be her grave dissatisfaction, or my
own pain.
“Finally I left o words except for a strange chant. I was in the
black silence of a medieval street, and blindly I followed its sharp
turns, comforted by the height of its narrow tenements, which
seemed at any moment capable of falling together, closing this
alleyway under the indierent stars like a seam. ‘I cannot make
her happy, I do not make her happy; and her unhappiness
increases every day.’ This was my chant, which I repeated like a
rosary, a charm to change the facts, her inevitable disillusionment
with our quest, which left us in this limbo where I felt her
drawing away from me, dwarng me with her enormous need. I
even conceived a savage jealousy of the dollmaker to whom she’d
conded her request for that tinkling diminutive lady, because
that dollmaker had for a moment given her something which she
held close to herself in my presence as if I were not there at all.
“What did it amount to, where could it lead?
“Never since I’d come to Paris months before did I so
completely feel the city’s immense size, how I might pass from
this twisting, blind street of my choice into a world of delights;
and never had I so keenly felt its uselessness. Uselessness to her if
she could not abide this anger, if she could not somehow grasp
the limits of which she seemed so angrily, bitterly aware. I was
helpless. She was helpless. But she was stronger than me. And I
knew, had known even at the moment when I turned away from
her in the hotel, that behind her eyes there was for me her
continuing love.
“And dizzy and weary and now comfortably lost, I became
aware with a vampire’s inextinguishable senses that I was being
followed.
“My rst thought was irrational. She’d come out after me. And,
cleverer than I, had tracked me at a great distance. But as surely
as this came to mind, another thought presented itself, a rather
cruel thought in light of all that had passed between us. The steps
were too heavy for hers. It was just some mortal walking in this
same alley, walking unwarily towards death.
“So I continued on, almost ready to fall into my pain again
because I deserved it, when my mind said, You are a fool; listen.
And it dawned on me that these steps, echoing as they were at a
great distance behind me, were in perfect time with my own. An
accident. Because if mortal they were, they were too far o for
mortal hearing. But as I stopped now to consider that, they
stopped. And as I turned saying, Louis, you deceive yourself, and
started up, they started up. Footfall with my footfall, gaining
speed now as I gained speed. And then something remarkable,
undeniable occurred. En garde as I was for the steps that were
behind me, I tripped on a fallen roof tile and was pitched against
the wall. And behind me, those steps echoed to perfection the
sharp shuing rhythm of my fall.
“I was astonished. And in a state of alarm well beyond fear. To
the right and left of me the street was dark. Not even a tarnished
light shone in a garret window. And the only safety aorded me,
the great distance between myself and these steps, was as I said
the guarantee that they were not human. I was at a complete loss
as to what I might do. I had the near-irresistible desire to call out
to this being and welcome it, to let it know as quickly and as
completely as possible that I awaited it, had been searching for it,
would confront it. Yet I was afraid. What seemed sensible was to
resume walking, waiting for it to gain on me; and as I did so I was
again mocked by my own pace, and the distance between us
remained the same. The tension mounted in me, the dark around
me becoming more and more menacing; and I said over and over,
measuring these steps, Why do you track me, why do you let me
know you are there?
“Then I rounded a sharp turn in the street, and a gleam of light
showed ahead of me at the next corner. The street sloped up
towards it, and I moved on very slowly, my heart deafening in my
ears, reluctant to eventually reveal myself in that light.
“And as I hesitated—stopped, in fact—right before the turn,
something rumbled and clattered above, as if the roof of the
house beside me had all but collapsed. I jumped back just in time,
before a load of tiles crashed into the street, one of them brushing
my shoulder. All was quiet now. I stared at the tiles, listening,
waiting. And then slowly I edged around the turn into the light,
only to see there looming over me at the top of the street beneath
the gas lamp the unmistakable gure of another vampire.
“He was enormous in height though gaunt as myself, his long,
white face very bright under the lamp, his large, black eyes
staring at me in what seemed undisguised wonder. His right leg
was slightly bent as though he’d just come to a halt in mid-step.
And then suddenly I realized that not only was his black hair long
and full and combed precisely like my own, and not only was he
dressed in identical coat and cape to my own, but he stood
imitating my stance and facial expression to perfection. I
swallowed and let my eyes pass over him slowly, while I struggled
to hide from him the rapid pace of my pulse as his eyes in like
manner passed over me. And when I saw him blink I realized I
had just blinked, and as I drew my arms up and folded them
across my chest he slowly did the same. It was maddening. Worse
than maddening. Because, as I barely moved my lips, he barely
moved his lips, and I found the words dead and I couldn’t make
other words to confront this, to stop it. And all the while, there
was that height and those sharp black eyes and that powerful
attention which was, of course, perfect mockery, but nevertheless
riveted to myself. He was the vampire; I seemed the mirror.
“ ‘Clever,’ I said to him shortly and desperately, and, of course,
he echoed that word as fast as I said it. And maddened as I was
more by that than anything else, I found myself yielding to a slow
smile, defying the sweat which had broken from every pore and
the violent tremor in my legs. He also smiled, but his eyes had a
ferocity that was animal, unlike my own, and the smile was
sinister in its sheer mechanical quality.
“Now I took a step forward and so did he; and when I stopped
short, staring, so did he. But then he slowly, very slowly, lifted his
right arm, though mine remained poised and, gathering his
ngers into a st, he now struck at his chest in quickening time to
mock my heartbeat. Laughter erupted from him. He threw back
his head, showing his canine teeth, and the laughter seemed to ll
the alleyway. I loathed him. Completely.
“ ‘You mean me harm?’ I asked, only to hear the words
mockingly obliterated.
“ ‘Trickster!’ I said sharply. ‘Buoon!’
“That word stopped him. Died on his lips even as he was saying
it, and his face went hard.
“What I did then was impulse. I turned my back on him and
started away, perhaps to make him come after me and demand to
know who I was. But in a movement so swift I couldn’t possibly
have seen it, he stood before me again, as if he had materialized
there. Again I turned my back on him—only to face him under the
lamp again, the settling of his dark, wavy hair the only indication
that he had in fact moved.
“ ‘I’ve been looking for you! I’ve come to Paris looking for you!’
I forced myself to say the words, seeing that he didn’t echo them
or move, only stood staring at me.
“Now he moved forward slowly, gracefully, and I saw his own
body and his own manner had regained possession of him and,
extending his hand as if he meant to ask for mine, he very
suddenly pushed me backwards, o-balance. I could feel my shirt
drenched and sticking to my esh as I righted myself, my hand
grimed from the damp wall.
“And as I turned to confront him, he threw me completely
down.
“I wish I could describe to you his power. You would know, if I
were to attack you, to deal you a sharp blow with an arm you
never saw move towards you.
“But something in me said, Show him your own power; and I
rose up fast, going right for him with both arms out. And I hit the
night, the empty night swirling beneath that lamppost, and stood
there looking about me, alone and a complete fool. This was a test
of some sort, I knew it then, though consciously I xed my
attention on the dark street, the recesses of the doorways,
anyplace he might have hidden. I wanted no part of this test, but
saw no way out of it. And I was contemplating some way to
disdainfully make that clear when suddenly he appeared again,
jerking me around and inging me down the sloping cobblestones
where I’d fallen before. I felt his boot against my ribs. And,
enraged, I grabbed hold of his leg, scarcely believing it when I felt
the cloth and the bone. He’d fallen against the stone wall opposite
and let out a snarl of unrepressed anger.
“What happened then was pure confusion. I held tight to that
leg, though the boot strained to get at me. And at some point,
after he’d toppled over me and pulled loose from me, I was lifted
into the air by strong hands. What might have happened I can
well imagine. He could have ung me several yards from himself,
he was easily that strong. And battered, severely injured, I might
have lost consciousness. It was violently disturbing to me even in
that melee that I didn’t know whether I could lose consciousness.
But it was never put to a test. For, confused as I was, I was certain
someone else had come between us, someone who was battling
him decisively, forcing him to relinquish his hold.
“When I looked up, I was in the street, and I saw two gures
only for an instant, like the icker of an image after the eye is
shut. Then there was only a swirling of black garments, a boot
striking the stones, and the night was empty. I sat, panting, the
sweat pouring down my face, staring around me and then up at
the narrow ribbon of faint sky. Slowly, only because my eye was
totally concentrated upon it now, a gure emerged from the
darkness of the wall above me. Crouched on the jutting stones of
the lintel, it turned so that I saw the barest gleam of light on the
hair and then the stark, white face. A strange face, broader and
not so gaunt as the other, a large dark eye that was holding me
steadily. A whisper came from the lips, though they never
appeared to move. ‘You are all right.’
“I was more than all right. I was on my feet, ready to attack.
But the gure remained crouched, as if it were part of the wall. I
could see a white hand working in what appeared to be a
waistcoat pocket. A card appeared, white as the ngers that
extended it to me. I didn’t move to take it. ‘Come to us, tomorrow
night,’ said that same whisper from the smooth, expressionless
face, which still showed only one eye to the light. ‘I won’t harm
you,’ he said. ‘And neither will that other. I won’t allow it.’ And
his hand did that thing which vampires can make happen; that is,
it seemed to leave his body in the dark to deposit the card in my
hand, the purple script immediately shining in the light. And the
gure, moving upwards like a cat on the wall, vanished fast
between the garret gables overhead.
“I knew I was alone now, could feel it. And the pounding of my
heart seemed to ll the empty little street as I stood under the
lamp reading that card. The address I knew well enough, because
I had been to theaters along that street more than once. But the
name was astonishing: ‘Théâtre des Vampires,’ and the time
noted, nine p.m.
“I turned it over and discovered written there the note, ‘Bring
the petite beauty with you. You are most welcome. Armand.’
“There was no doubt that the gure who’d given it to me had
written this message. And I had only a very short time to get to
the hotel and to tell Claudia of these things before dawn. I was
running fast, so that even the people I passed on the boulevards
did not actually see the shadow that brushed them.”
The Théâtre des Vampires was by invitation only, and the next
night the doorman inspected my card for a moment while the rain
fell softly all around us: on the man and the woman stopped at
the shut-up box oce; on the crinkling posters of penny-dreadful
vampires with their outstretched arms and cloaks resembling bat
wings ready to close on the naked shoulders of a mortal victim;
on the couples that pressed past us into the packed lobby, where I
could easily perceive that the crowd was all human, no vampires
among them, not even this boy who admitted us nally into the
press of conversation and damp wool and ladies’ gloved ngers
fumbling with felt-brimmed hats and wet curls. I pressed for the
shadows in a feverish excitement. We had fed earlier only so that
in the bustling street of this theater our skin would not be too
white, our eyes too unclouded. And that taste of blood which I
had not enjoyed had left me all the more uneasy; but I had no
time for it. This was no night for killing. This was to be a night of
revelations, no matter how it ended. I was certain.
“Yet here we stood with this all-too-human crowd, the doors
opening now on the auditorium, and a young boy pushing
towards us, beckoning, pointing above the shoulders of the crowd
to the stairs. Ours was a box, one of the best in the house, and if
the blood had not dimmed my skin completely nor made Claudia
into a human child as she rode in my arms, this usher did not
seem at all to notice it nor to care. In fact, he smiled all too
readily as he drew back the curtain for us on two chairs before
the brass rail.
“ ‘Would you put it past them to have human slaves?’ Claudia
whispered.
“ ‘But Lestat never trusted human slaves,’ I answered. I watched
the seats ll, watched the marvellously owered hats navigating
below me through the rows of silk chairs. White shoulders
gleamed in the deep curve of the balcony spreading out from us;
diamonds glittered in the gas light. ‘Remember, be sly for once,’
came Claudia’s whisper from beneath her bowed blond head.
‘You’re too much of a gentleman.’
“The lights were going out, rst in the balcony, and then along
the walls of the main oor. A knot of musicians had gathered in
the pit below the stage, and at the foot of the long, green velvet
curtain the gas ickered, then brightened, and the audience
receded as if enveloped by a gray cloud through which only the
diamonds sparkled, on wrists, on throats, on ngers. And a hush
descended like that gray cloud until all the sound was collected in
one echoing persistent cough. Then silence. And the slow,
rhythmical beating of a tambourine. Added to that was the thin
melody of a wooden ute, which seemed to pick up the sharp
metallic tink of the bells of the tambourine, winding them into a
haunting melody that was medieval in sound. Then the
strumming of strings that emphasized the tambourine. And the
ute rose, in that melody singing of something melancholy, sad. It
had a charm to it, this music, and the whole audience seemed
stilled and united by it, as if the music of that ute were a
luminous ribbon unfurling slowly in the dark. Not even the rising
curtain broke the silence with the slightest sound. The lights
brightened, and it seemed the stage was not the stage but a
thickly wooded place, the light glittering on the roughened tree
trunks and the thick clusters of leaves beneath the arch of
darkness above; and through the trees could be seen what
appeared the low, stone bank of a river and above that, beyond
that, the glittering waters of the river itself, this whole three-
dimensional world produced in painting upon a ne silk scrim
that shivered only slightly in a faint draft.
“A sprinkling of applause greeted the illusion, gathering
adherents from all parts of the auditorium until it reached its
short crescendo and died away. A dark, draped gure was moving
on the stage from tree trunk to tree trunk, so fast that as he
stepped into the lights he seemed to appear magically in the
center, one arm ashing out from his cloak to show a silver scythe
and the other to hold a mask on a slender stick before the
invisible face, a mask which showed the gleaming countenance of
Death, a painted skull.
“There were gasps from the crowd. It was Death standing
before the audience, the scythe poised, Death at the edge of a
dark wood. And something in me was responding now as the
audience responded, not in fear, but in some human way, to the
magic of that fragile painted set, the mystery of the lighted world
there, the world in which this gure moved in his billowing black
cloak, back and forth before the audience with the grace of a
great panther, drawing forth, as it were, those gasps, those sighs,
those reverent murmurs.
“And now, behind this gure, whose very gestures seemed to
have a captivating power like the rhythm of the music to which it
moved, came other gures from the wings. First an old woman,
very stooped and bent, her gray hair like moss, her arm hanging
down with the weight of a great basket of owers. Her shuttling
steps scraped on the stage, and her head bobbed with the rhythm
of the music and the darting steps of the Grim Reaper. And then
she started back as she laid eyes on him and, slowly setting down
her basket, made her hands into the attitude of prayer. She was
tired; her head leaned now on her hands as if in sleep, and she
reached out for him, supplicating. But as he came towards her, he
bent to look directly into her face, which was all shadows to us
beneath her hair, and started back then, waving his hand as if to
freshen the air. Laughter erupted uncertainly from the audience.
But as the old woman rose and took after Death, the laughter took
over.
“The music broke into a jig with their running, as round and
round the stage the old woman pursued Death, until he nally
attened himself into the dark of a tree trunk, bowing his masked
face under his wing like a bird. And the old woman, lost,
defeated, gathered up her basket as the music softened and
slowed to her pace, and made her way o the stage. I did not like
it. I did not like the laughter. I could see the other gures moving
in now, the music orchestrating their gestures, cripples on
crutches and beggars with rags the color of ash, all reaching out
for Death, who whirled, escaping this one with a sudden arching
of the back, eeing from that one with an eeminate gesture of
disgust, waving them all away nally in a foppish display of
weariness and boredom.
“It was then I realized that the languid, white hand that made
these comic arcs was not painted white. It was a vampire hand
which wrung laughter from the crowd. A vampire hand lifted now
to the grinning skull, as the stage was nally clear, as if stiing a
yawn. And then this vampire, still holding the mask before his
face, adopted marvellously the attitude of resting his weight
against a painted silken tree, as if he were falling gently to sleep.
The music twittered like birds, rippled like the owing of the
water; and the spotlight, which encircled him in a yellow pool,
grew dim, all but fading away as he slept.
“And another spot pierced the scrim, seeming to melt it
altogether, to reveal a young woman standing alone far upstage.
She was majestically tall and all but enshrined by a voluminous
mane of golden blond hair. I could feel the awe of the audience as
she seemed to ounder in the spotlight, the dark forest rising on
the perimeter, so that she seemed to be lost in the trees. And she
was lost; and not a vampire. The soil on her mean blouse and skirt
was not stage paint, and nothing had touched her perfect face,
which gazed into the light now, as beautiful and nely chiselled
as the face of a marble Virgin, that hair her haloed veil. She could
not see in the light, though all could see her. And the moan which
escaped her lips as she oundered seemed to echo over the thin,
romantic singing of the ute, which was a tribute to that beauty.
The gure of Death woke with a start in his pale spotlight and
turned to see her as the audience had seen her, and to throw up
his free hand in tribute, in awe.
“The twitter of laughter died before it became real. She was too
beautiful, her gray eyes too distressed. The performance too
perfect. And then the skull mask was thrown suddenly into the
wings and Death showed a beaming white face to the audience,
his hurried hands stroking his handsome black hair, straightening
a waistcoat, brushing imaginary dust from his lapels. Death in
love. And clapping rose for the luminous countenance, the
gleaming cheekbones, the winking black eye, as if it were all
masterful illusion when in fact it was merely and certainly the
face of a vampire, the vampire who had accosted me in the Latin
Quarter, that leering, grinning vampire, harshly illuminated by
the yellow spot.
“My hand reached for Claudia’s in the dark and pressed it
tightly. But she sat still, as if enrapt. The forest of the stage,
through which that helpless mortal girl stared blindly towards the
laughter, divided in two phantom halves, moving away from the
center, freeing the vampire to close in on her.
“And she who had been advancing towards the footlights, saw
him suddenly and came to a halt, making a moan like a child.
Indeed, she was very like a child, though clearly a full-grown
woman. Only a slight wrinkling of the tender esh around her
eyes betrayed her age. Her breasts though small were beautifully
shaped beneath her blouse, and her hips though narrow gave her
long, dusty skirt a sharp, sensual angularity. As she moved back
from the vampire, I saw the tears standing in her eyes like glass in
the icker of the lights, and I felt my spirit contract in fear for
her, and in longing. Her beauty was heartbreaking.
“Behind her, a number of painted skulls suddenly moved
against the blackness, the gures that carried the masks invisible
in their black clothes, except for free white hands that clasped the
edge of a cape, the folds of a skirt. Vampire women were there,
moving in with the men towards the victim, and now they all, one
by one, thrust the masks away so they fell in an artful pile, the
sticks like bones, the skulls grinning into the darkness above. And
there they stood, seven vampires, the women vampires three in
number, their molded white breasts shining over the tight black
bodices of their gowns, their hard luminescent faces staring with
dark eyes beneath curls of black hair. Starkly beautiful, as they
seemed to oat close around that orid human gure, yet pale
and cold compared to that sparkling golden hair, that petal-pink
skin. I could hear the breath of the audience, the halting, the soft
sighs. It was a spectacle, that circle of white faces pressing closer
and closer, and that leading gure, that Gentleman Death, turning
to the audience now with his hands crossed over his heart, his
head bent in longing to elicit their sympathy: was she not
irresistible! A murmur of assenting laughter, of sighs.
“But it was she who broke the magic silence.
“ ‘I don’t want to die…’ she whispered. Her voice was like a
bell.
“ ‘We are death,’ he answered her; and from around her came
the whisper, ‘Death.’ She turned, tossing her hair so it became a
veritable shower of gold, a rich and living thing over the dust of
her poor clothing. ‘Help me!’ she cried out softly, as if afraid even
to raise her voice. ‘Someone…’ she said to the crowd she knew
must be there. A soft laughter came from Claudia. The girl
onstage only vaguely understood where she was, what was
happening, but knew innitely more than this house of people
that gaped at her.
“ ‘I don’t want to die! I don’t want to!’ Her delicate voice broke,
her eyes xed on the tall, malevolent leader vampire, that demon
trickster who now stepped out of the circle of the others towards
her.
“ ‘We all die,’ he answered her. ‘The one thing you share with
every mortal is death.’ His hand took in the orchestra, the distant
faces of the balcony, the boxes.
“ ‘No,’ she protested in disbelief. ‘I have so many years, so
many….’ Her voice was light, lilting in her pain. It made her
irresistible, just as did the movement of her naked throat and the
hand that uttered there.
“ ‘Years!’ said the master vampire. ‘How do you know you have
so many years? Death is no respecter of age! There could be a
sickness in your body now, already devouring you from within.
Or, outside, a man might be waiting to kill you simply for your
yellow hair!’ And his ngers reached for it, the sound of his deep,
preternatural voice sonorous. ‘Need I tell you what fate may have
in store for you?’
“ ‘I don’t care…I’m not afraid,’ she protested, her clarion voice
so fragile after him. ‘I would take my chance.…’
“ ‘And if you do take that chance and live, live for years, what
would be your heritage? The humpbacked, toothless visage of old
age?’ And now he lifted her hair behind her back, exposing her
pale throat. And slowly he drew the string from the loose gathers
of her blouse. The cheap fabric opened, the sleeves slipping o
her narrow, pink shoulders; and she clasped it, only to have him
take her wrists and thrust them sharply away. The audience
seemed to sigh in a body, the women behind their opera glasses,
the men leaning forward in their chairs. I could see the cloth
falling, see the pale, awless skin pulsing with her heart and the
tiny nipples letting the cloth slip precariously, the vampire
holding her right wrist tightly at her side, the tears coursing down
her blushing cheeks, her teeth biting into the esh of her lip. ‘Just
as sure as this esh is pink, it will turn gray, wrinkled with age,’
he said.
“ ‘Let me live, please,’ she begged, her face turning away from
him. ‘I don’t care…I don’t care!’
“ ‘But then, why should you care if you die now? If these things
don’t frighten you…these horrors?’
“She shook her head, baed, outsmarted, helpless. I felt the
anger in my veins, as sure as the passion. With a bowed head she
bore the whole responsibility for defending life, and it was unfair,
monstrously unfair that she should have to pit logic against his for
what was obvious and sacred and so beautifully embodied in her.
But he made her speechless, made her overwhelming instinct
seem petty, confused. I could feel her dying inside, weakening,
and I hated him.
“The blouse slipped to her waist. A murmur moved through the
titillated crowd as her small, round breasts stood exposed. She
struggled to free her wrist, but he held it fast.
“ ‘And suppose we were to let you go…suppose the Grim
Reaper had a heart that could resist your beauty…to whom would
he turn his passion? Someone must die in your place. Would you
pick the person for us? The person to stand here and suer as you
suer now?’ He gestured to the audience. Her confusion was
terrible. ‘Have you a sister…a mother…a child?’
“ ‘No,’ she gasped. ‘No…’ shaking the mane of hair.
“ ‘Surely someone could take your place, a friend? Choose!’
“ ‘I can’t. I wouldn’t.…’ She writhed in his tight grasp. The
vampires around her looked on, still, their faces evincing no
emotion, as if the preternatural esh were masks. ‘Can’t you do
it?’ he taunted her. And I knew, if she said she could, how he
would only condemn her, say she was as evil as he for marking
someone for death, say that she deserved her fate.
“ ‘Death waits for you everywhere.’ He sighed now as if he were
suddenly frustrated. The audience could not perceive it; I could. I
could see the muscles of his smooth face tightening. He was trying
to keep her gray eyes on his eyes, but she looked desperately,
hopefully away from him. On the warm, rising air I could smell
the dust and perfume of her skin, hear the soft beating of her
heart. ‘Unconscious death…the fate of all mortals.’ He bent closer
to her, musing, infatuated with her, but struggling. ‘Hmmm….but
we are conscious death! That would make you a bride. Do you
know what it means to be loved by Death?’ He all but kissed her
face, the brilliant stain of her tears. ‘Do you know what it means
to have Death know your name?’
“She looked at him, overcome with fear. And then her eyes
seemed to mist over, her lips to go slack. She was staring past him
at the gure of another vampire who had emerged slowly from
the shadows. For a long time he had stood on the periphery of the
gathering, his hands clasped, his large, dark eyes very still. His
attitude was not the attitude of hunger. He did not appear rapt.
But she was looking into his eyes now, and her pain bathed her in
a beauteous light, a light which made her irresistibly alluring. It
was this that held the jaded audience, this terrible pain. I could
feel her skin, feel the small, pointed breasts, feel my arms
caressing her. I shut my eyes against it and saw her starkly against
that private darkness. It was what they felt all around her, this
community of vampires. She had no chance.
“And, looking up again, I saw her shimmering in the smoky
light of the footlamps, saw her tears like gold, as softly from that
other vampire who stood at a distance came the words…‘No
pain.’
“I could see the trickster stien, but no one else would see it.
They would see only the girl’s smooth, childlike face, those parted
lips, slack with innocent wonder as she gazed at that distant
vampire, hear her soft voice repeat after him, ‘No pain?’
“ ‘Your beauty is a gift to us.’ His rich voice eortlessly lled
the house, seemed to x and subdue the mounting wave of
excitement. And slightly, almost imperceptibly, his hand moved.
The trickster was receding, becoming one of those patient, white
faces, whose hunger and equanimity were strangely one. And
slowly, gracefully, the other moved towards her. She was languid,
her nakedness forgotten, those lids uttering, a sigh escaping her
moist lips. ‘No pain,’ she assented. I could hardly bear it, the sight
of her yearning towards him, seeing her dying now, under this
vampire’s power. I wanted to cry out to her, to break her swoon.
And I wanted her. Wanted her, as he was moving in on her, his
hand out now for the drawstring of her skirt as she inclined
towards him, her head back, the black cloth slipping over her
hips, over the golden gleam of the hair between her legs—a
child’s down, that delicate curl—the skirt dropping to her feet.
And this vampire opened his arms, his back to the ickering
footlights, his auburn hair seeming to tremble as the gold of her
hair fell around his black coat. ‘No pain…no pain…’ he was
whispering to her, and she was giving herself over.
“And now, turning her slowly to the side so that they could all
see her serene face, he was lifting her, her back arching as her
naked breasts touched his buttons, her pale arms enfolded his
neck. She stiened, cried out as he sank his teeth, and her face
was still as the dark theater reverberated with shared passion. His
white hand shone on her orid buttocks, her hair dusting it,
stroking it. He lifted her o the boards as he drank, her throat
gleaming against his white cheek. I felt weak, dazed, hunger
rising in me, knotting my heart, my veins. I felt my hand gripping
the brass bar of the box, tighter, until I could feel the metal
creaking in its joints. And that soft, wrenching sound which none
of those mortals might hear seemed somehow to hook me to the
solid place where I was.
“I bowed my head; I wanted to shut my eyes. The air seemed
fragrant with her salted skin, and close and hot and sweet.
Around her the other vampires drew in, the white hand that held
her tight quivered, and the auburn-haired vampire let her go,
turning her, displaying her, her head fallen back as he gave her
over, one of those starkly beautiful vampire women rising behind
her, cradling her, stroking her as she bent to drink. They were all
about her now, as she was passed from one to another and to
another, before the enthralled crowd, her head thrown forward
over the shoulder of a vampire man, the nape of her neck as
enticing as the small buttocks or the awless skin of her long
thighs, the tender creases behind her limply bent knees.
“I was sitting back in the chair, my mouth full of the taste of
her, my veins in torment. And in the corner of my eye was that
auburn-haired vampire who had conquered her, standing apart as
he had been before, his dark eyes seeming to pick me from the
darkness, seeming to x on me over the currents of warm air.
“One by one the vampires were withdrawing. The painted
forest came back, sliding soundlessly into place. Until the mortal
girl, frail and very white, lay naked in that mysterious wood,
nestled in the silk of a black bier as if on the oor of the forest
itself; and the music had begun again, eerie and alarming,
growing louder as the lights grew dimmer. All the vampires were
gone, except the trickster, who had gathered his scythe from the
shadows and also his handheld mask. And he crouched near the
sleeping girl as the lights slowly faded, and the music alone had
power and force in the enclosing dark. And then that died also.
“For a moment, the entire crowd was utterly still.
“Then applause began here and there and suddenly united
everyone around us. The lights rose in the sconces on the walls
and heads turned to one another, conversation erupting all round.
A woman rising in the middle of a row to pull her fox fur sharply
from the chair, though no one had yet made way for her; someone
else pushing out quickly to the carpeted aisle; and the whole body
was on its feet as if driven to the exits.
“But then the hum became the comfortable, jaded hum of the
sophisticated and perfumed crowd that had lled the lobby and
the vault of the theater before. The spell was broken. The doors
were ung open on the fragrant rain, the clop of horses’ hooves,
and voices calling for taxis. Down in the sea of slightly askew
chairs, a white glove gleamed on a green silk cushion.
“I sat watching, listening, one hand shielding my lowered face
from anyone and no one, my elbow resting on the rail, the passion
in me subsiding, the taste of the girl on my lips. It was as though
on the smell of the rain came her perfume still, and in the empty
theater I could hear the throb of her beating heart. I sucked in my
breath, tasted the rain, and glimpsed Claudia sitting innitely
still, her gloved hands in her lap.
“There was a bitter taste in my mouth, and confusion. And then
I saw a lone usher moving on the aisle below, righting the chairs,
reaching for the scattered programs that littered the carpet. I was
aware that this ache in me, this confusion, this blinding passion
which only let me go with a stubborn slowness would be
obliterated if I were to drop down to one of those curtained
archways beside him and draw him up fast in the darkness and
take him as that girl was taken. I wanted to do it, and I wanted
nothing. Claudia said near my bowed ear, ‘Patience, Louis.
Patience.’
“I opened my eyes. Someone was near, on the periphery of my
vision; someone who had outsmarted my hearing, my keen
anticipation, which penetrated like a sharp antenna even this
distraction, or so I thought. But there he was, soundless, beyond
the curtained entrance of the box, that vampire with the auburn
hair, that detached one, standing on the carpeted stairway looking
at us. I knew him now to be, as I’d suspected, the vampire who
had given me the card admitting us to the theater. Armand.
“He would have startled me, except for his stillness, the remote
dreamy quality of his expression. It seemed he’d been standing
against that wall for the longest time, and betrayed no sign of
change as we looked at him, then came towards him. Had he not
so completely absorbed me, I would have been relieved he was
not the tall, black-haired one; but I didn’t think of this. Now his
eyes moved languidly over Claudia with no tribute whatsoever to
the human habit of disguising the stare. I placed my hand on
Claudia’s shoulder. ‘We’ve been searching for you a very long
time,’ I said to him, my heart growing calmer, as if his calm were
drawing o my trepidation, my care, like the sea drawing
something into itself from the land. I cannot exaggerate this
quality in him. Yet I can’t describe it and couldn’t then; and the
fact that my mind sought to describe it even to myself unsettled
me. He gave me the very feeling that he knew what I was doing,
and his still posture and his deep, brown eyes seemed to say there
was no use in what I was thinking, or particularly the words I was
struggling to form now. Claudia said nothing.
“He moved away from the wall and began to walk down the
stairs, while at the same time he made a gesture that welcomed us
and bade us follow; but all this was uid and fast. My gestures
were the caricature of human gestures compared to his. He
opened a door in the lower wall and admitted us to the rooms
below the theater, his feet only brushing the stone stairway as we
descended, his back to us with complete trust.
“And now we entered what appeared to be a vast subterranean
ballroom, carved, as it were, out of a cellar more ancient than the
building overhead. Above us, the door that he had opened fell
shut, and the light died away before I could get a fair impression
of the room. I heard the rustle of his garments in the dark and
then the sharp explosion of a match. His face appeared like a
great ame over the match. And then a gure moved into the
light beside him, a young boy, who brought him a candle. The
sight of the boy brought back to me in a shock the teasing
pleasure of the naked woman on the stage, her prone body, the
pulsing blood. And he turned and gazed at me now, much in the
manner of the auburn-haired vampire, who had lit the candle and
whispered to him, ‘Go.’ The light expanded to the distant walls,
and the vampire held the light up and moved along the wall,
beckoning us both to follow.
“I could see a world of frescoes and murals surrounded us, their
colors deep and vibrant above the dancing ame, and gradually
the theme and content beside us came clear. It was the terrible
‘Triumph of Death’ by Breughel, painted on such a massive scale
that all the multitude of ghastly gures towered over us in the
gloom, those ruthless skeletons ferrying the helpless dead in a
fetid moat or pulling a cart of human skulls, beheading an
outstretched corpse or hanging humans from the gallows. A bell
tolled over the endless hell of scorched and smoking land,
towards which great armies of men came with the hideous,
mindless march of soldiers to a massacre. I turned away, but the
auburn-haired one touched my hand and led me further along the
wall to see ‘The Fall of the Angels’ slowly materializing, with the
damned being driven from the celestial heights into a lurid chaos
of feasting monsters. So vivid, so perfect was it, I shuddered. The
hand that had touched me did the same again, and I stood still
despite it, deliberately looking above to the very height of the
mural, where I could make out of the shadows two beautiful
angels with trumpets to their lips. And for a second the spell was
broken. I had the strong sense of the rst evening I had entered
Notre-Dame; but then that was gone, like something gossamer and
precious snatched away from me.
“The candle rose. And horrors rose all around me: the dumbly
passive and degraded damned of Bosch, the bloated, coned
corpses of Traini, the monstrous horsemen of Dürer, and blown
out of all endurable scale a promenade of medieval woodcut,
emblem, and engraving. The very ceiling writhed with skeletons
and moldering dead, with demons and the instruments of pain, as
if this were the cathedral of death itself.
“Where we stood nally in the center of the room, the candle
seemed to pull the images to life everywhere around us. Delirium
threatened, that awful shifting of the room began, that sense of
falling. I reached out for Claudia’s hand. She stood musing, her
face passive, her eyes distant when I looked to her, as if she’d
have me let her alone; and then her feet shot o from me with a
rapid tapping on the stone oor that echoed all along the walls,
like ngers tapping on my temples, on my skull. I held my
temples, staring dumbly at the oor in search of shelter, as if to
lift my eyes would force me to look on some wretched suering I
would not, could not endure. Then again I saw the vampire’s face
oating in his ame, his ageless eyes circled in dark lashes. His
lips were very still, but as I stared at him he seemed to smile
without making even the slightest movement. I watched him all
the harder, convinced it was some powerful illusion I could
penetrate with keen attention; and the more I watched, the more
he seemed to smile and nally to be animated with a soundless
whispering, musing, singing. I could hear it like something curling
in the dark, as wallpaper curls in the blast of a re or paint peels
from the face of a burning doll. I had the urge to reach for him, to
shake him violently so that his still face would move, admit to
this soft singing; and suddenly I found him pressed against me, his
arm around my chest, his lashes so close I could see them matted
and gleaming above the incandescent orb of his eye, his soft,
tasteless breath against my skin. It was delirium.
“I moved to get away from him, and yet I was drawn to him
and I didn’t move at all, his arm exerting its rm pressure, his
candle blazing now against my eye, so that I felt the warmth of it;
all my cold esh yearned for that warmth, but suddenly I waved
to snu it but couldn’t nd it, and all I saw was his radiant face,
as I had never seen Lestat’s face, white and poreless and sinewy
and male. The other vampire. All other vampires. An innite
procession of my own kind.
“The moment ended.
“I found myself with my hand outstretched, touching his face;
but he was a distance away from me, as if he’d never moved near
me, making no attempt to brush my hand away. I drew back,
ushed, stunned.
“Far away in the Paris night a bell chimed, the dull, golden
circles of sound seeming to penetrate the walls, the timbers that
carried that sound down into the earth like great organ pipes.
Again came that whispering, that inarticulate singing. And
through the gloom I saw that mortal boy watching me, and I
smelled the hot aroma of his esh. The vampire’s facile hand
beckoned him, and he came towards me, his eyes fearless and
exciting, and he drew up to me in the candlelight and put his
arms around my shoulders.
“Never had I felt this, never had I experienced it, this yielding
of a conscious mortal. But before I could push him away for his
own sake, I saw the bluish bruise on his tender neck. He was
oering it to me. He was pressing the length of his body against
me now, and I felt the hard strength of his sex beneath his clothes
pressing against my leg. A wretched gasp escaped my lips, but he
bent close, his lips on what must have been so cold, so lifeless for
him; and I sank my teeth into his skin, my body rigid, that hard
sex driving against me, and I lifted him in passion o the oor.
Wave after wave of his beating heart passed into me as,
weightless, I rocked with him, devouring him, his ecstasy, his
conscious pleasure.
“Then, weak and gasping, I saw him at a distance from me, my
arms empty, my mouth still ooded with the taste of his blood.
He lay against that auburn-haired vampire, his arm about the
vampire’s waist, and he gazed at me in that same pacic manner
of the vampire, his eyes misted over and weak from the loss of
life. I remember moving mutely forward, drawn to him and
seemingly unable to control it, that gaze taunting me, that
conscious life defying me; he should die and would not die; he
would live on, comprehending, surviving that intimacy! I turned.
The host of vampires moved in the shadows, their candles
whipped and eeting on the cool air; and above them loomed a
great broadcast of ink-drawn gures: the sleeping corpse of a
woman ravaged by a vulture with a human face; a naked man
bound hand and foot to a tree, beside him hanging the torso of
another, his severed arms tied still to another branch, and on a
spike this dead man’s staring head.
“The singing came again, that thin, ethereal singing. Slowly the
hunger in me subsided, obeyed, but my head throbbed and the
ames of the candles seemed to merge in burnished circles of
light. Someone touched me suddenly, pushed me roughly, so that
I almost lost my balance, and when I straightened I saw the thin,
angular face of the trickster vampire I despised. He reached out
for me with his white hands. But the other one, the distant one,
moved forward suddenly and stood between us. It seemed he
struck the other vampire, that I saw him move, and then again I
did not see him move; both stood still like statues, eyes xed on
one another, and time passed like wave after wave of water
rolling back from a still beach. I cannot say how long we stood
there, the three of us in those shadows, and how utterly still they
seemed to me, only the shimmering ames seeming to have life
behind them. Then I remember oundering along the wall and
nding a large oak chair into which I all but collapsed. It seemed
Claudia was near and speaking to someone in a hushed but sweet
voice. My forehead teemed with blood, with heat.
“ ‘Come with me,’ said the auburn-haired vampire. I was
searching his face for the movement of his lips that must have
preceded the sound, yet it was so hopelessly long after the sound.
And then we were walking, the three of us, down a long stone
stairway deeper beneath the city, Claudia ahead of us, her shadow
long against the wall. The air grew cool and refreshing with the
fragrance of water, and I could see the droplets bleeding through
the stones like beads of gold in the light of the vampire’s candle.
“It was a small chamber we entered, a re burning in a deep
replace cut into the stone wall. A bed lay at the other end, tted
into the rock and enclosed with two brass gates. At rst I saw
these things clearly, and saw the long wall of books opposite the
replace and the wooden desk that was against it, and the con
to the other side. But then the room began to waver, and the
auburn-haired vampire put his hands on my shoulders and guided
me down into a leather chair. The re was intensely hot against
my legs, but this felt good to me, sharp and clear, something to
draw me out of this confusion. I sat back, my eyes only half open,
and tried to see again what was about me. It was as if that distant
bed were a stage and on the linen pillows of the little stage lay
that boy, his black hair parted in the middle and curling about his
ears, so that he looked now in his dreamy, fevered state like one
of those lithe androgynous creatures of a Botticelli painting; and
beside him, nestled against him, her tiny white hand stark against
his ruddy esh, lay Claudia, her face buried in his neck. The
masterful auburn-haired vampire looked on, his hands clasped in
front of him; and when Claudia rose now, the boy shuddered. The
vampire picked her up, gently, as I might pick her up, her hands
nding a hold on his neck, her eyes half shut with the swoon, her
lips rouged with blood. He set her gently on the desk, and she lay
back against the leatherbound books, her hands falling gracefully
into the lap of her lavender dress. The gates closed on the boy
and, burying his face in the pillows, he slept.
“There was something disturbing to me in the room, and I
didn’t know what it was. I didn’t in truth know what was wrong
with me, only that I’d been drawn forcefully either by myself or
someone else from two erce, consuming states: an absorption
with those grim paintings, and the kill to which I’d abandoned
myself, obscenely, in the eyes of others.
“I didn’t know what it was that threatened me now, what it was
that my mind sought escape from. I kept looking at Claudia, the
way she lay against the books, the way she sat amongst the
objects of the desk, the polished white skull, the candle-holder,
the open parchment book whose hand-painted script gleamed in
the light; and then above her there emerged into focus the
lacquered and shimmering painting of a medieval devil, horned
and hoofed, his bestial gure looming over a coven of
worshipping witches. Her head was just beneath it, the loose
curling strands of her hair just stroking it; and she watched the
brown-eyed vampire with wide, wondering eyes. I wanted to pick
her up suddenly, and frightfully, horribly, I saw her in my kindled
imagination opping like a doll. I was gazing at the devil, that
monstrous face preferable to the sight of her in her eerie stillness.
“ ‘You won’t awaken the boy if you speak,’ said the brown-eyed
vampire. ‘You’ve come from so far, you’ve travelled so long.’ And
gradually my confusion subsided, as if smoke were rising and
moving away on a current of fresh air. And I lay awake and very
calm, looking at him as he sat in the opposite chair. Claudia, too,
looked at him. And he looked from one to the other of us, his
smooth face and pacic eyes very like they’d been all along, as
though there had never been any change in him at all.
“ ‘My name is Armand,’ he said. ‘I sent Santiago to give you the
invitation. I know your names. I welcome you to my house.’
“I gathered my strength to speak, my voice sounding strange to
me when I told him that we had feared we were alone.
“ ‘But how did you come into existence?’ he asked. Claudia’s
hand rose ever so slightly from her lap, her eyes moving
mechanically from his face to mine. I saw this and knew that he
must have seen it, and yet he gave no sign. I knew at once what
she meant to tell me. ‘You don’t want to answer,’ said Armand,
his voice low and even more measured than Claudia’s voice, far
less human than my own. I sensed myself slipping away again
into contemplation of that voice and those eyes, from which I had
to draw myself up with great eort.
“ ‘Are you the leader of this group?’ I asked him.
“ ‘Not in the way you mean leader,’ he answered. ‘But if there
were a leader here, I would be that one.’
“ ‘I haven’t come…you’ll forgive me…to talk of how I came into
being. Because that’s no mystery to me, it presents no question. So
if you have no power to which I might be required to render
respect, I don’t wish to talk of those things.’
“ ‘If I told you I did have such power, would you respect it?’ he
asked.
“I wish I could describe his manner of speaking, how each time
he spoke he seemed to arise out of a state of contemplation very
like that state into which I felt I was drifting, from which it took
so much to wrench myself; and yet he never moved, and seemed
at all times alert. This distracted me while at the same time I was
powerfully attracted by it, as I was by this room, its simplicity, its
rich, warm combination of essentials: the books, the desk, the two
chairs by the re, the con, the pictures. The luxury of those
rooms in the hotel seemed vulgar, but more than that,
meaningless, beside this room. I understood all of it except for the
mortal boy, the sleeping boy, whom I didn’t understand at all.
“ ‘I’m not certain,’ I said, unable to keep my eyes o that awful
medieval Satan. ‘I would have to know from what…from whom it
comes. Whether it came from other vampires…or elsewhere.’
“ ‘Elsewhere…’ he said. ‘What is elsewhere?’
“ ‘That!’ I pointed to the medieval picture.
“ ‘That is a picture,’ he said.
“ ‘Nothing more?’
“ ‘Nothing more.’
“ ‘Then Satan…some satanic power doesn’t give you your
power here, either as leader or as vampire?’
“ ‘No,’ he said calmly, so calmly it was impossible for me to
know what he thought of my questions, if he thought of them at
all in the manner which I knew to be thinking.
“ ‘And the other vampires?’
“ ‘No,’ he said.
“ ‘Then we are not…’ I sat forward, ‘…the children of Satan?’
“ ‘How could we be the children of Satan?’ he asked. ‘Do you
believe that Satan made this world around you?’
“ ‘No, I believe that God made it, if anyone made it. But He also
must have made Satan, and I want to know if we are his children!’
“ ‘Exactly, and consequently if you believe God made Satan,
you must realize that all Satan’s power comes from God and that
Satan is simply God’s child, and that we are God’s children also.
There are no children of Satan, really.’
“I couldn’t disguise my feelings at this. I sat back against the
leather, looking at that small woodcut of the devil, released for
the moment from any sense of obligation to Armand’s presence,
lost in my thoughts, in the undeniable implications of his simple
logic.
“ ‘But why does this concern you? Surely what I say doesn’t
surprise you,’ he said. ‘Why do you let it aect you?’
“ ‘Let me explain,’ I began. ‘I know that you’re a master
vampire. I respect you. But I’m incapable of your detachment. I
know what it is, and I do not possess it and I doubt that I ever
will. I accept this.’
“ ‘I understand,’ he nodded. ‘I saw you in the theater, your
suering, your sympathy with that girl. I saw your sympathy for
Denis when I oered him to you; you die when you kill, as if you
feel that you deserve to die, and you stint on nothing. But why,
with this passion and this sense of justice, do you wish to call
yourself the child of Satan!’
“ ‘I’m evil, evil as any vampire who ever lived! I’ve killed over
and over and will do it again. I took that boy, Denis, when you
gave him to me, though I was incapable of knowing whether he
would survive or not.’
“ ‘Why does that make you as evil as any vampire? Aren’t there
gradations of evil? Is evil a great perilous gulf into which one falls
with the rst sin, plummeting to the depth?’
“ ‘Yes, I think it is,’ I said to him. ‘It’s not logical, as you would
make it sound. But it’s that dark, that empty. And it is without
consolation.’
“ ‘But you’re not being fair,’ he said with the rst glimmer of
expression in his voice. ‘Surely you attribute great degrees and
variations to goodness. There is the goodness of the child which is
innocence, and then there is the goodness of the monk who has
given up everything to others and lives a life of self-deprivation
and service. The goodness of saints, the goodness of good
housewives. Are all these the same?’
“ ‘No. But equally and innitely dierent from evil.’ I answered.
“I didn’t know I thought these things. I spoke them now as my
thoughts. And they were my most profound feelings taking a
shape they could never have taken had I not spoken them, had I
not thought them out this way in conversation with another. I
thought myself then possessed of a passive mind, in a sense. I
mean that my mind could only pull itself together, formulate
thought out of the muddle of longing and pain, when it was
touched by another mind; fertilized by it; deeply excited by that
other mind and driven to form conclusions. I felt now the rarest,
most acute alleviation of loneliness. I could easily visualize and
suer that moment years before in another century, when I had
stood at the foot of Babette’s stairway, and feel the perpetual
metallic frustration of years with Lestat; and then that passionate
and doomed aection for Claudia which made loneliness retreat
behind the soft indulgence of the senses, the same senses that
longed for the kill. And I saw the desolate mountaintop in eastern
Europe where I had confronted that mindless vampire and killed
him in the monastery ruins. And it was as if the great feminine
longing of my mind were being awakened again to be satised.
And this I felt despite my own words: ‘But it’s that dark, that
empty. And it is without consolation.’
“I looked at Armand, at his large brown eyes in that taut,
timeless face, watching me again like a painting; and I felt the
slow shifting of the physical world I’d felt in the painted
ballroom, the pull of my old delirium, the wakening of a need so
terrible that the very promise of its fulllment contained the
unbearable possibility of disappointment. And yet there was the
question, the awful, ancient, hounding question of evil.
“I think I put my hands to my head as mortals do when so
deeply troubled that they instinctively cover the face, reach for
the brain as if they could reach through the skull and massage the
living organ out of its agony.
“ ‘And how is this evil achieved?’ he asked. ‘How does one fall
from grace and become in one instant as evil as the mob tribunal
of the Revolution or the most cruel of the Roman emperors? Does
one merely have to miss Mass on Sunday, or bite down on the
Communion Host? Or steal a loaf of bread…or sleep with a
neighbor’s wife?’
“ ‘No….’ I shook my head. ‘No.’
“ ‘But if evil is without gradation, and it does exist, this state of
evil, then only one sin is needed. Isn’t that what you are saying?
That God exists and.…’
“ ‘I don’t know if God exists,’ I said. ‘And for all I do know…He
doesn’t exist.’
“ ‘Then no sin matters,’ he said. ‘No sin achieves evil.’
“ ‘That’s not true. Because if God doesn’t exist we are the
creatures of highest consciousness in the universe. We alone
understand the passage of time and the value of every minute of
human life. And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a
single human life. Whether a man would have died tomorrow or
the day after or eventually…it doesn’t matter. Because if God does
not exist, this life…every second of it…is all we have.’
“He sat back, as if for the moment stopped, his large eyes
narrowing, then xing on the depths of the re. This was the rst
time since he had come for me that he had looked away from me,
and I found myself looking at him unwatched. For a long time he
sat in this manner and I could all but feel his thoughts, as if they
were palpable in the air like smoke. Not read them, you
understand, but feel the power of them. It seemed he possessed an
aura and even though his face was very young, which I knew
meant nothing, he appeared innitely old, wise. I could not dene
it, because I could not explain how the youthful lines of his face,
how his eyes expressed innocence and this age and experience at
the same time.
“He rose now and looked at Claudia, his hands loosely clasped
behind his back. Her silence all this time had been understandable
to me. These were not her questions, yet she was fascinated with
him and was waiting for him and no doubt learning from him all
the while that he spoke to me. But I understood something else
now as they looked at each other. He had moved to his feet with a
body totally at his command, devoid of the habit of human
gesture, gesture rooted in necessity, ritual, uctuation of mind;
and his stillness now was unearthly. And she, as I’d never seen
before, possessed the same stillness. And they were gazing at each
other with a preternatural understanding from which I was simply
excluded.
“I was something whirling and vibrating to them, as mortals
were to me. And I knew when he turned towards me again that
he’d come to understand she did not believe or share my concept
of evil.
“His speech commenced without the slightest warning. ‘This is
the only real evil left,’ he said to the ames.
“ ‘Yes,’ I answered, feeling that all-consuming subject alive
again, obliterating all concerns as it always had for me.
“ ‘It’s true,’ he said, shocking me, deepening my sadness, my
despair.
“ ‘Then God does not exist…you have no knowledge of His
existence?’
“ ‘None,’ he said.
“ ‘No knowledge!’ I said it again, unafraid of my simplicity, my
miserable human pain.
“ ‘None.’
“ ‘And no vampire here has discourse with God or with the
devil!’
“ ‘No vampire that I’ve ever known,’ he said, musing, the re
dancing in his eyes. ‘And as far as I know today, after four
hundred years, I am the oldest living vampire in the world.’
“I stared at him, astonished.
“Then it began to sink in. It was as I’d always feared, and it was
as lonely, it was as totally without hope. Things would go on as
they had before, on and on. My search was over. I sat back
listlessly watching those licking ames.
“It was futile to leave him to continue it, futile to travel the
world only to hear again the same story. ‘Four hundred years’—I
think I repeated the words—‘four hundred years.’ I remember
staring at the re. There was a log falling very slowly in the re,
drifting downwards in a process that would take it the night, and
it was pitted with tiny holes where some substance that had
larded it through and through had burned away fast, and in each
of these tiny holes there danced a ame amid the larger ames:
and all of these tiny ames with their black mouths seemed to me
faces that made a chorus; and the chorus sang without singing.
The chorus had no need of singing; in one breath in the re,
which was continuous, it made its soundless song.
“All at once Armand moved in a loud rustling of garments, a
descent of crackling shadow and light that left him kneeling at my
feet, his hands outstretched holding my head, his eyes burning.
“ ‘This evil, this concept, it comes from disappointment, from
bitterness! Don’t you see? Children of Satan! Children of God! Is
this the only question you bring to me, is this the only power that
obsesses you, so that you must make us gods and devils yourself
when the only power that exists is inside ourselves? How could
you believe in these old fantastical lies, these myths, these
emblems of the supernatural?’ He snatched the devil from above
Claudia’s still countenance so swiftly that I couldn’t see the
gesture, only the demon leering before me and then crackling in
the ames.
“Something was broken inside me when he said this; something
ripped aside, so that a torrent of feeling became one with my
muscles in every limb. I was on my feet now, backing away from
him.
“ ‘Are you mad?’ I asked, astonished at my own anger, my own
despair. ‘We stand here, the two of us, immortal, ageless, rising
nightly to feed that immortality on human blood; and there on
your desk against the knowledge of the ages sits a awless child
as demonic as ourselves; and you ask me how I could believe I
would nd a meaning in the supernatural! I tell you, after seeing
what I have become, I could damn well believe anything! Couldn’t
you? And believing thus, being thus confounded, I can now accept
the most fantastical truth of all: that there is no meaning to any of
this!’
“I backed towards the door, away from his astonished face, his
hand hovering before his lips, the ngers curling to dig into his
palm. ‘Don’t! Come back…’ he whispered.
“ ‘No, not now. Let me go. Just a while…let me go….Nothing’s
changed; it’s all the same. Let that sink into me…just let me go.’
“I looked back before I shut the door. Claudia’s face was turned
towards me, though she sat as before, her hands clasped on her
knee. She made a gesture then, subtle as her smile, which was
tinged with the faintest sadness, that I was to go on.
“It was my desire to escape the theater then entirely, to nd the
streets of Paris and wander, letting the vast accumulation of
shocks gradually wear away. But, as I groped along the stone
passage of the lower cellar, I became confused. I was perhaps
incapable of exerting my own will. It seemed more than ever
absurd to me that Lestat should have died, if in fact he had; and
looking back on him, as it seemed I was always doing, I saw him
more kindly than before. Lost like the rest of us. Not the jealous
protector of any knowledge he was afraid to share. He knew
nothing. There was nothing to know.
“Only, that was not quite the thought that was gradually
coming clear to me. I had hated him for all the wrong reasons;
yes, that was true. But I did not fully understand it yet.
Confounded, I found myself sitting nally on those dark steps, the
light from the ballroom throwing my own shadow on the rough
oor, my hands holding my head, a weariness overcoming me.
My mind said, Sleep. But more profoundly, my mind said, Dream.
And yet I made no move to return to the Hôtel Saint-Gabriel,
which seemed a very secure and airy place to me now, a place of
subtle and luxurious mortal consolation where I might lie in a
chair of puce velvet, put one foot on an ottoman and watch the
re lick the marble tile, looking for all the world to myself in the
long mirrors like a thoughtful human. Flee to that, I thought, ee
all that is pulling you. And again came that thought: I have
wronged Lestat, I have hated him for all the wrong reasons. I
whispered it now, trying to withdraw it from the dark,
inarticulate pool of my mind, and the whispering made a
scratching sound in the stone vault of the stairs.
“But then a voice came softly to me on the air, too faint for
mortals: ‘How is this so? How did you wrong him?’
“I turned round so sharp that my breath left me. A vampire sat
near me, so near as to almost brush my shoulder with the tip of
his boot, his legs drawn up close to him, his hands clasped around
them. For a moment I thought my eyes deceived me. It was the
trickster vampire, whom Armand had called Santiago.
“Yet nothing in his manner indicated his former self, that
devilish, hateful self that I had seen, even only a few hours ago
when he had reached out for me and Armand had struck him. He
was staring at me over his drawn-up knees, his hair dishevelled,
his mouth slack and without cunning.
“ ‘It makes no dierence to anyone else,’ I said to him, the fear
in me subsiding.
“ ‘But you said a name; I heard you say a name,’ he said.
“ ‘A name I don’t want to say again,’ I answered, looking away
from him. I could see now how he’d fooled me, why his shadow
had not fallen over mine; he crouched in my shadow. The vision
of him slithering down those stone stairs to sit behind me was
slightly disturbing. Everything about him was disturbing, and I
reminded myself that he could in no way be trusted. It seemed to
me then that Armand, with his hypnotic power, aimed in some
way for the maximum truth in presentation of himself: he had
drawn out of me without words my state of mind. But this
vampire was a liar. And I could feel his power, a crude, pounding
power that was almost as strong as Armand’s.
“ ‘You come to Paris in search of us, and then you sit alone on
the stairs…’ he said, in a conciliatory tone. ‘Why don’t you come
up with us? Why don’t you speak to us and talk to us of this
person whose name you spoke; I know who it was, I know the
name.’
“ ‘You don’t know, couldn’t know. It was a mortal,’ I said now,
more from instinct than conviction. The thought of Lestat
disturbed me, the thought that this creature should know of
Lestat’s death.
“ ‘You came here to ponder mortals, justice done to mortals?’ he
asked; but there was no reproach or mockery in his tone.
“ ‘I came to be alone, let me not oend you. It’s a fact,’ I
murmured.
“ ‘But alone in this frame of mind, when you don’t even hear
my steps.…I like you. I want you to come upstairs.’ And as he said
this, he slowly pulled me to my feet beside him.
“At that moment the door of Armand’s cell threw a long light
into the passage. I heard him coming, and Santiago let me go. I
was standing there baed. Armand appeared at the foot of the
steps, with Claudia in his arms. She had that same dull expression
on her face which she’d had all during my talk with Armand. It
was as if she were deep in her own considerations and saw
nothing around her; and I remember noting this, though not
knowing what to think of it, that it persisted even now. I took her
quickly from Armand, and felt her soft limbs against me as if we
were both in the con, yielding to that paralytic sleep.
“And then, with a powerful thrust of his arm, Armand pushed
Santiago away. It seemed he fell backwards, but was up again
only to have Armand pull him towards the head of the steps, all of
this happening so swiftly I could only see the blur of their
garments and hear the scratching of their boots. Then Armand
stood alone at the head of the steps, and I went upward towards
him.
“ ‘You cannot safely leave the theater tonight,’ he whispered to
me. ‘He is suspicious of you. And my having brought you here, he
feels that it is his right to know you better. Our security depends
on it.’ He guided me slowly into the ballroom. But then he turned
to me and pressed his lips almost to my ear: ‘I must warn you.
Answer no questions. Ask and you open one bud of truth for
yourself after another. But give nothing, nothing, especially
concerning your origin.’
“He moved away from us now, but beckoning for us to follow
him into the gloom where the others were gathered, clustered like
remote marble statues, their faces and hands all too like our own.
I had the strong sense then of how we were all made from the
same material, a thought which had only occurred to me
occasionally in all the long years in New Orleans; and it disturbed
me, particularly when I saw one or more of the others reected in
the long mirrors that broke the density of those awful murals.
“Claudia seemed to awaken as I found one of the carved oak
chairs and settled into it. She leaned towards me and said
something strangely incoherent, which seemed to mean that I
must do as Armand said: say nothing of our origin. I wanted to
talk with her now, but I could see that tall vampire, Santiago,
watching us, his eyes moving slowly from us to Armand. Several
women vampires had gathered around Armand, and I felt a
tumult of feeling as I saw them put their arms around his waist.
And what appalled me as I watched was not their exquisite form,
their delicate features and graceful hands made hard as glass by
vampire nature, or their bewitching eyes which xed on me now
in a sudden silence; what appalled me was my own erce
jealousy. I was afraid when I saw them so close to him, afraid
when he turned and kissed them each. And, as he brought them
near to me now, I was unsure and confused.
“Estelle and Celeste are the names I remember, porcelain
beauties, who fondled Claudia with the license of the blind,
running their hands over her radiant hair, touching even her lips,
while she, her eyes still misty and distant, tolerated it all,
knowing what I also knew and what they seemed unable to grasp:
that a woman’s mind as sharp and distinct as their own lived
within that small body. It made me wonder as I watched her
turning about for them, holding out her lavender skirts and
smiling coldly at their adoration, how many times I must have
forgotten, spoken to her as if she were the child, fondled her too
freely, brought her into my arms with an adult’s abandon. My
mind went in three directions: that last night in the Hôtel Saint-
Gabriel, which seemed a year ago, when she talked of love with
rancor; my reverberating shock at Armand’s revelations or lack of
them; and a quiet absorption of the vampires around me, who
whispered in the dark beneath the grotesque murals. For I could
learn much from the vampires without ever asking a question,
and vampire life in Paris was all that I’d feared it to be, all that
the little stage in the theater above had indicated it was.
“The dim lights of the house were mandatory, and the paintings
appreciated in full, added to almost nightly when some vampire
brought a new engraving or picture by a contemporary artist into
the house. Celeste, with her cold hand on my arm, spoke with
contempt of men as the originators of these pictures, and Estelle,
who now held Claudia on her lap, emphasized to me, the naive
colonial, that vampires had not made such horrors themselves but
merely collected them, conrming over and over that men were
capable of far greater evil than vampires.
“ ‘There is evil in making such paintings?’ Claudia asked softly
in her toneless voice.
“Celeste threw back her black curls and laughed. ‘What can be
imagined can be done,’ she answered quickly, but her eyes
reected a certain contained hostility. ‘Of course, we strive to
rival men in kills of all kinds, do we not!’ She leaned forward and
touched Claudia’s knee. But Claudia merely looked at her,
watching her laugh nervously and continue. Santiago drew near,
to bring up the subject of our rooms in the Hôtel Saint-Gabriel;
frightfully unsafe, he said, with an exaggerated stage gesture of
the hands. And he showed a knowledge of those rooms which was
amazing. He knew the chest in which we slept; it struck him as
vulgar. ‘Come here!’ he said to me, with that near childlike
simplicity he had evinced on the steps. ‘Live with us and such
disguise is unnecessary. We have our guards. And tell me, where
do you come from!’ he said, dropping to his knees, his hand on
the arm of my chair. ‘Your voice, I know that accent; speak again.’
“I was vaguely horried at the thought of having an accent to
my French, but this wasn’t my immediate concern. He was strong-
willed and blatantly possessive, throwing back at me an image of
that possessiveness which was owering in me more fully every
moment. And meanwhile, the vampires around us talked on,
Estelle explaining that black was the color for a vampire’s clothes,
that Claudia’s lovely pastel dress was beautiful but tasteless. ‘We
blend with the night,’ she said. ‘We have a funereal gleam.’ And
now, bending her cheek next to Claudia’s cheek, she laughed to
soften her criticism; and Celeste laughed, and Santiago laughed,
and the whole room seemed alive with unearthly tinkling
laughter, preternatural voices echoing against the painted walls,
rippling the feeble candle ames. ‘Ah, but to cover up such curls,’
said Celeste, now playing with Claudia’s golden hair. And I
realized what must have been obvious: that all of them had dyed
their hair black, but for Armand; and it was that, along with the
black clothes, that added to the disturbing impression that we
were statues from the same chisel and paint brush. I cannot
emphasize too much how disturbed I was by that impression. It
seemed to stir something in me deep inside, something I couldn’t
fully grasp.
“I found myself wandering away from them to one of the
narrow mirrors and watching them all over my shoulder. Claudia
gleamed like a jewel in their midst; so would that mortal boy who
slept below. The realization was coming to me that I found them
dull in some awful way: dull, dull everywhere that I looked, their
sparkling vampire eyes repetitious, their wit like a dull, brass bell.
“Only the knowledge I needed distracted me from these
thoughts. ‘The vampires of eastern Europe…’ Claudia was saying.
‘Monstrous creatures, what have they to do with us?’
“ ‘Revenants,’ Armand answered softly over the distance that
separated them, playing on faultless preternatural ears to hear
what was more muted than a whisper. The room fell silent. ‘Their
blood is dierent, vile. They increase as we do but without skill or
care. In the old days—’ Abruptly he stopped. I could see his face
in the mirror. It was strangely rigid.
“ ‘Oh, but tell us about the old days,’ said Celeste, her voice
shrill, at human pitch. There was something vicious in her tone.
“And now Santiago took up the same baiting manner. ‘Yes, tell
us of the covens, and the herbs that would render us invisible.’ He
smiled. ‘And the burnings at the stake!’
“Armand xed his eyes on Claudia. ‘Beware those monsters,’ he
said, and calculatedly his eyes passed over Santiago and then
Celeste. ‘Those revenants. They will attack you as if you were
human.’
“Celeste shuddered, uttering something in contempt, an
aristocrat speaking of vulgar cousins who bear the same name.
But I was watching Claudia because it seemed her eyes were
misted again as before. She looked away from Armand suddenly.
“The voices of the others rose again, aected party voices, as
they conferred with one another on the night’s kills, describing
this or that encounter without a smattering of emotion, challenges
to cruelty erupting from time to time like ashes of white
lightning: a tall, thin vampire being accosted in one corner for a
needless romanticizing of mortal life, a lack of spirit, a refusal to
do the most entertaining thing at the moment it was available to
him. He was simple, shrugging, slow at words, and would fall for
long periods into a stupeed silence, as if, near-choked with
blood, he would as soon have gone to his con as remained here.
And yet he remained, held by the pressure of this unnatural group
who had made of immortality a conformist’s club. How would
Lestat have found it? Had he been here? What had caused him to
leave? No one had dictated to Lestat—he was master of his small
circle; but how they would have praised his inventiveness, his
catlike toying with his victims. And waste…that word, that value
which had been all-important to me as a edgling vampire, was
spoken of often. You ‘wasted’ the opportunity to kill this child.
You ‘wasted’ the opportunity to frighten this poor woman or drive
that man to madness, which only a little prestidigitation would
have accomplished.
“My head was spinning. A common mortal headache. I longed
to get away from these vampires, and only the distant gure of
Armand held me, despite his warnings. He seemed remote from
the others now, though he nodded often enough and uttered a few
words here and there so that he seemed a part of them, his hand
only occasionally rising from the lion’s paw of his chair. And my
heart expanded when I saw him this way, saw that no one
amongst the small throng caught his glance as I caught his glance,
and no one held it from time to time as I held it. Yet he remained
aloof from me, his eyes alone returning to me. His warning
echoed in my ears, yet I disregarded it. I longed to get away from
the theater altogether and stood listlessly, garnering information
at last that was useless and innitely dull.
“ ‘But is there no crime amongst you, no cardinal crime?’
Claudia asked. Her violet eyes seemed xed on me, even in the
mirror, as I stood with my back to her.
“ ‘Crime! Boredom!’ cried out Estelle, and she pointed a white
nger at Armand. He laughed softly with her from his distant
position at the end of the room. ‘Boredom is death!’ she cried and
bared her vampire fangs, so that Armand put a languid hand to
his forehead in a stage gesture of fear and falling.
“But Santiago, who was watching with his hands behind his
back, intervened. ‘Crime!’ he said. ‘Yes, there is a crime. A crime
for which we would hunt another vampire down until we
destroyed him. Can you guess what that is?’ He glanced from
Claudia to me and back again to her masklike face. ‘You should
know, who are so secretive about the vampire that made you.’
“ ‘And why is that?’ she asked, her eyes widening ever so
slightly, her hands resting still in her lap.
“A hush fell over the room, gradually, then completely, all
those white faces turned to face Santiago as he stood there, one
foot forward, his hands clasped behind his back, towering over
Claudia. His eyes gleamed as he saw he had the oor. And then
he broke away and crept up behind me, putting his hand on my
shoulder. ‘Can you guess what that crime is? Didn’t your vampire
master tell you?’
“And drawing me slowly around with those invading familiar
hands, he tapped my heart lightly in time with its quickening
pace.
“ ‘It is the crime that means death to any vampire anywhere
who commits it. It is to kill your own kind!’
“ ‘Aaaaah!’ Claudia cried out, and lapsed into peals of laughter.
She was walking across the oor now with swirling lavender silk
and crisp resounding steps. Taking my hand, she said, ‘I was so
afraid it was to be born like Venus out of the foam, as we were!
Master vampire! Come, Louis, let’s go!’ she beckoned, as she
pulled me away.
“Armand was laughing. Santiago was still. And it was Armand
who rose when we reached the door. ‘You’re welcome tomorrow
night,’ he said. ‘And the night after.’
“I don’t think I caught my breath until I’d reached the street. The
rain was still falling, and all of the street seemed sodden and
desolate in the rain, but beautiful. A few scattered bits of paper
blowing in the wind, a gleaming carriage passing slowly with the
thick, rhythmic clop of the horse. The sky was pale violet. I sped
fast, with Claudia beside me leading the way, then nally
frustrated with the length of my stride, riding in my arms.
“ ‘I don’t like them,’ she said to me with a steel fury as we
neared the Hôtel Saint-Gabriel. Even its immense, brightly lit
lobby was still in the pre-dawn hour. I spirited past the sleepy
clerks, the long faces at the desk. ‘I’ve searched for them the
world over, and I despise them!’ She threw o her cape and
walked into the center of the room. A volley of rain hit the French
windows. I found myself turning up the lights one by one and
lifting the candelabrum to the gas ames as if I were Lestat or
Claudia. And then, seeking the puce velvet chair I’d envisioned in
that cellar, I slipped down into it, exhausted. It seemed for the
moment as if the room blazed about me; as my eyes xed on a
gilt-framed painting of pastel trees and serene waters, the vampire
spell was broken. They couldn’t touch us here, and yet I knew this
to be a lie, a foolish lie.
“ ‘I am in danger, danger,’ Claudia said with that smoldering
wrath.
“ ‘But how can they know what we did to him? Besides, we are
in danger! Do you think for a moment I don’t acknowledge my
own guilt! And if you were the only one…’ I reached out for her
now as she drew near, but her erce eyes settled on me and I let
my hands drop back limp. ‘Do you think I would leave you in
danger?’
“She was smiling. For a moment I didn’t believe my eyes. ‘No,
you would not, Louis. You would not. Danger holds you to me.…’
“ ‘Love holds me to you,’ I said softly.
“ ‘Love?’ she mused. ‘What do you mean by love?’ And then, as
if she could see the pain in my face, she came close and put her
hands on my cheek. She was cold, unsatised, as I was cold and
unsatised, teased by that mortal boy but unsatised.
“ ‘That you take my love for granted always,’ I said to her. ‘That
we are wed.…’ But even as I said these words I felt my old
conviction waver; I felt that torment I’d felt last night when she
had taunted me about mortal passion. I turned away from her.
“ ‘You would leave me for Armand if he beckoned to you….’
“ ‘Never…’ I said to her.
“ ‘You would leave me, and he wants you as you want him. He’s
been waiting for you.…’
“ ‘Never….’ I rose now and made my way to that chest. The
doors were locked, but they would not keep those vampires out.
Only we could keep them out by rising as early as the light would
let us. I turned to her and told her to come. And she was at my
side. I wanted to bury my face in her hair, I wanted to beg her
forgiveness. Because, in truth, she was right; and yet I loved her,
loved her as always. And now, as I drew her in close to me, she
said: ‘Do you know what it was that he told me over and over
without ever speaking a word; do you know what was the kernel
of the trance he put me in so my eyes could only look at him, so
that he pulled me as if my heart were on a string?’
“ ‘So you felt it…’ I whispered. ‘So it was the same.’
“ ‘He rendered me powerless!’ she said. I saw the image of her
against those books above his desk, her limp neck, her dead
hands.
“ ‘But what are you saying? That he spoke to you, that he…’
“ ‘Without words!’ she repeated. I could see the gas lights going
dim, the candle ames too solid in their stillness. The rain beat on
the panes. ‘Do you know what he said…that I should die!’ she
whispered. ‘That I should let you go.’
“I shook my head, and yet in my monstrous heart I felt a surge
of excitement. She spoke the truth as she believed it. There was a
lm in her eyes, glassy and silver. ‘He draws life out of me into
himself,’ she said, her lovely lips trembling so, I couldn’t bear it. I
held her tight, but the tears stood in her eyes. ‘Life out of the boy
who is his slave, life out of me whom he would make his slave. He
loves you. He loves you. He would have you, and he would not
have me stand in the way.’
“ ‘You don’t understand him!’ I fought it, kissing her; I wanted
to shower her with kisses, her cheek, her lips.
“ ‘No, I understand him only too well,’ she whispered to my
lips, even as they kissed her. ‘It is you who don’t understand him.
Love’s blinded you, your fascination with his knowledge, his
power. If you knew how he drinks death you’d hate him more
than you ever hated Lestat. Louis, you must never return to him. I
tell you, I’m in danger!’ ”
“Early the next night, I left her, convinced that Armand alone
among the vampires of the theater could be trusted. She let me go
reluctantly, and I was troubled, deeply, by the expression in her
eyes. Weakness was unknown to her, and yet I saw fear and
something beaten even now as she let me go. And I hurried on my
mission, waiting outside the theater until the last of the patrons
had gone and the doormen were tending to the locks.
“What they thought I was, I wasn’t certain. An actor, like the
others, who did not take o his paint? It didn’t matter. What
mattered was that they let me through, and I passed them and the
few vampires in the ballroom, unaccosted, to stand at last at
Armand’s open door. He saw me immediately, no doubt had
heard my step a long way o, and he welcomed me at once and
asked me to sit down. He was busy with his human boy, who was
dining at the desk on a silver plate of meats and sh. A decanter
of white wine stood next to him, and though he was feverish and
weak from last night, his skin was orid and his heat and
fragrance were a torment to me. Not apparently to Armand, who
sat in the leather chair by the re opposite me, turned to the
human, his arms folded on the leather arm. The boy lled his
glass and held it up now in a salute. ‘My master,’ he said, his eyes
ashing on me as he smiled; but the toast was to Armand.
“ ‘Your slave,’ Armand whispered with a deep intake of breath
that was passionate. And he watched, as the boy drank deeply. I
could see him savoring the wet lips, the mobile esh of the throat
as the wine went down. And now the boy took a morsel of white
meat, making that same salute, and consumed it slowly, his eyes
xed on Armand. It was as though Armand feasted upon the feast,
drinking in that part of life which he could not share any longer
except with his eyes. And lost though he seemed to it, it was
calculated; not that torture I’d felt years ago when I stood outside
Babette’s window longing for her human life.
“When the boy had nished, he knelt with his arms around
Armand’s neck as if he actually savored the icy esh. And I could
remember the night Lestat rst came to me, how his eyes seemed
to burn, how his white face gleamed. You know what I am to you
now.
“Finally, it was nished. He was to sleep, and Armand locked
the brass gates against him. And in minutes, heavy with his meal,
he was dozing, and Armand sat opposite me, his large, beautiful
eyes tranquil and seemingly innocent. When I felt them pull me
towards him, I dropped my eyes, wished for a re in the grate,
but there were only ashes.
“ ‘You told me to say nothing of my origin, why was this?’ I
asked, looking up at him. It was as if he could sense my holding
back, yet wasn’t oended, only regarding me with a slight
wonder. But I was weak, too weak for his wonder, and again I
looked away from him.
“ ‘Did you kill this vampire who made you? Is that why you are
here without him, why you won’t say his name? Santiago thinks
that you did.’
“ ‘And if this is true, or if we can’t convince you otherwise, you
would try to destroy us?’ I asked.
“ ‘I would not try to do anything to you,’ he said, calmly. ‘But as
I told you, I am not the leader here in the sense that you asked.’
“ ‘Yet they believe you to be the leader, don’t they? And
Santiago, you shoved him away from me twice.’
“ ‘I’m more powerful than Santiago, older. Santiago is younger
than you are,’ he said. His voice was simple, devoid of pride.
These were facts.
“ ‘We want no quarrel with you.’
“ ‘It’s begun,’ he said. ‘But not with me. With those above.’
“ ‘But what reason has he to suspect us?’
“He seemed to be thinking now, his eyes cast down, his chin
resting on his closed st. After a while which seemed
interminable, he looked up. ‘I could give you reasons,’ he said.
‘That you are too silent. That the vampires of the world are a
small number and live in terror of strife amongst themselves and
choose their edglings with great care, making certain that they
respect the other vampires mightily. There are fteen vampires in
this house, and the number is jealously guarded. And weak
vampires are feared; I should say this also. That you are awed is
obvious to them: you feel too much, you think too much. As you
said yourself, vampire detachment is not of great value to you.
And then there is this mysterious child: a child who can never
grow, never be self-sucient. I would not make a vampire of that
boy there now if his life, which is so precious to me, were in
serious danger, because he is too young, his limbs not strong
enough, his mortal cup barely tasted: yet you bring with you this
child. What manner of vampire made her, they ask; did you make
her? So, you see, you bring with you these aws and this mystery
and yet you are completely silent. And so you cannot be trusted.
And Santiago looks for an excuse. But there is another reason
closer to the truth than all those things which I’ve just said to you.
And that is simply this: that when you rst encountered Santiago
in the Latin Quarter you…unfortunately…called him a buoon.’
“ ‘Aaaaah.’ I sat back.
“ ‘It would perhaps have been better all around if you had said
nothing.’ And he smiled to see that I understood with him the
irony of this.
“I sat reecting upon what he’d said, and what weighed as
heavily upon me through all of it were Claudia’s strange
admonitions, that this gentle-eyed young man had said to her,
‘Die,’ and beyond that my slowly accumulating disgust with the
vampires in the ballroom above.
“I felt an overwhelming desire to speak to him of these things.
Of her fear, no, not yet, though I couldn’t believe when I looked
into his eyes that he’d tried to wield this power over her: his eyes
said, Live. His eyes said, Learn. And oh, how much I wanted to
conde to him the breadth of what I didn’t understand; how,
searching all these years, I’d been astonished to discover those
vampires above had made of immortality a club of fads and cheap
conformity. And yet through this sadness, this confusion, came
the clear realization: Why should it be otherwise? What had I
expected? What right had I to be so bitterly disappointed in Lestat
that I would let him die! Because he wouldn’t show me what I
must nd in myself? Armand’s words, what had they been? The
only power that exists is inside ourselves.…
“ ‘Listen to me,’ he said now. ‘You must stay away from them.
Your face hides nothing. You would yield to me now were I to
question you. Look into my eyes.’
“I didn’t do this. I xed my eyes rmly on one of those small
paintings above his desk until it ceased to be the Madonna and
Child and became a harmony of line and color. Because I knew
what he was saying to me was true.
“ ‘Stop them if you will, advise them that we don’t mean any
harm. Why can’t you do this? You say yourself we’re not your
enemies, no matter what we’ve done….’
“I could hear him sigh, faintly. ‘I have stopped them for the
time being,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want such power over them as
would be necessary to stop them entirely. Because if I exercise
such power, then I must protect it. I will make enemies. And I
would have forever to deal with my enemies when all I want here
is a certain space, a certain peace. Or not to be here at all. I
accept the scepter of sorts they’ve given me, but not to rule over
them, only to keep them at a distance.’
“ ‘I should have known,’ I said, my eyes still xed on that
painting.
“ ‘Then, you must stay away. Celeste has a great deal of power,
being one of the oldest, and she is jealous of the child’s beauty.
And Santiago, as you can see, is only waiting for a shred of proof
that you’re outlaws.’
“I turned slowly and looked at him again where he sat with that
eerie vampire stillness, as if he were in fact not alive at all. The
moment lengthened. I heard his words just as if he were speaking
them again: ‘All I want here is a certain space, a certain peace. Or
not to be here at all.’ And I felt a longing for him so strong that it
took all my strength to contain it, merely to sit there gazing at
him, ghting it. I wanted it to be this way: Claudia safe amongst
these vampires somehow, guilty of no crime they might ever
discover from her or anyone else, so that I might be free, free to
remain forever in this cell as long as I could be welcome, even
tolerated, allowed here on any condition whatsoever.
“I could see that mortal boy again as if he were not asleep on
the bed but kneeling at Armand’s side with his arms around
Armand’s neck. It was an icon for me of love. The love I felt. Not
physical love, you must understand. I don’t speak of that at all,
though Armand was beautiful and simple, and no intimacy with
him would ever have been repellent. For vampires, physical love
culminates and is satised in one thing, the kill. I speak of
another kind of love which drew me to him completely as the
teacher which Lestat had never been. Knowledge would never be
withheld by Armand, I knew it. It would pass through him as
through a pane of glass so that I might bask in it and absorb it
and grow. I shut my eyes. And I thought I heard him speak, so
faintly I wasn’t certain. It seemed he said, ‘Do you know why I am
here?’
“I looked up at him again, wondering if he knew my thoughts,
could actually read them, if such could conceivably be the extent
of that power. Now after all these years I could forgive Lestat for
being nothing but an ordinary creature who could not show me
the uses of my powers; and yet I still longed for this, could fall
into it without resistance. A sadness pervaded it all, sadness for
my own weakness and my own awful dilemma. Claudia waited
for me. Claudia, who was my daughter and my love.
“ ‘What am I to do?’ I whispered. ‘Go away from them, go away
from you? After all these years…’
“ ‘They don’t matter to you,’ he said.
“I smiled and nodded.
“ ‘What is it you want to do?’ he asked. And his voice assumed
the most gentle, sympathic tone.
“ ‘Don’t you know, don’t you have that power?’ I asked. ‘Can’t
you read my thoughts as if they were words?’
“He shook his head. ‘Not the way you mean. I only know the
danger to you and the child is real because it’s real to you. And I
know your loneliness even with her love is almost more terrible
than you can bear.’
“I stood up then. It would seem a simple thing to do, to rise, to
go to the door, to hurry quickly down that passage; and yet it
took every ounce of strength, every smattering of that curious
thing I’ve called my detachment.
“ ‘I ask you to keep them away from us,’ I said at the door; but I
couldn’t look back at him, didn’t even want the soft intrusion of
his voice.
“ ‘Don’t go,’ he said.
“ ‘I have no choice.’
“I was in the passage when I heard him so close to me that I
started. He stood beside me, eye level with my eye, and in his
hand he held a key which he pressed into mine.
“ ‘There is a door there,’ he said, gesturing to the dark end,
which I’d thought to be merely a wall. ‘And a stairs to the side
street which no one uses but myself. Go this way now, so you can
avoid the others. You are anxious and they will see it.’ I turned
around to go at once, though every part of my being wanted to
remain there. ‘But let me tell you this,’ he said, and lightly he
pressed the back of his hand against my heart. ‘Use the power
inside you. Don’t abhor it anymore. Use that power! And when
they see you in the streets above, use that power to make your
face a mask and think as you gaze on them as on anyone: beware.
Take that word as if it were an amulet I’d given you to wear about
your neck. And when your eyes meet Santiago’s eyes, or the eyes
of any other vampire, speak to them politely what you will, but
think of that word and that word only. Remember what I say. I
speak to you simply because you respect what is simple. You
understand this. That’s your strength.’
“I took the key from him, and I don’t remember actually putting
it into the lock or going up the steps. Or where he was or what
he’d done. Except that, as I was stepping into the dark side street
behind the theater, I heard him say very softly to me from
someplace close to me: ‘Come here, to me, when you can.’ I
looked around for him but was not surprised that I couldn’t see
him. He had told me also sometime or other that I must not leave
the Hôtel Saint-Gabriel, that I must not give the others the shred
of evidence of guilt they wanted. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘killing other
vampires is very exciting; that is why it is forbidden under
penalty of death.’
“And then I seemed to awake. To the Paris street shining with
rain, to the tall, narrow buildings on either side of me, to the fact
that the door had shut to make a solid dark wall behind me and
that Armand was no longer there.
“And though I knew Claudia waited for me, though I passed her
in the hotel window above the gas lamps, a tiny gure standing
among waxen petaled owers, I moved away from the boulevard,
letting the darker streets swallow me, as so often the streets of
New Orleans had done.
“It was not that I did not love her; rather, it was that I knew I
loved her only too well, that the passion for her was as great as
the passion for Armand. And I ed them both now, letting the
desire for the kill rise in me like a welcome fever, threatening
consciousness, threatening pain.
“Out of the mist which had followed the rain, a man was
walking towards me. I can remember him as roaming on the
landscape of a dream, because the night around me was dark and
unreal. The hill might have been anywhere in the world, and the
soft lights of Paris were an amorphous shimmering in the fog. And
sharp-eyed and drunk, he was walking blindly into the arms of
death itself, his pulsing ngers reaching out to touch the very
bones of my face.
“I was not crazed yet, not desperate. I might have said to him,
‘Pass by.’ I believe my lips did form the word Armand had given
me, ‘Beware.’ Yet I let him slip his bold, drunken arm around my
waist; I yielded to his adoring eyes, to the voice that begged to
paint me now and spoke of warmth, to the rich, sweet smell of the
oils that streaked his loose shirt. I was following him, through
Montmartre, and I whispered to him, ‘You are not a member of
the dead.’ He was leading me through an overgrown garden,
through the sweet, wet grasses, and he was laughing as I said,
‘Alive, alive,’ his hand touching my cheek, stroking my face,
clasping nally my chin as he guided me into the light of the low
doorway, his reddened face brilliantly illuminated by the oil
lamps, the warmth seeping about us as the door closed.
“I saw the great sparkling orbs of his eyes, the tiny red veins
that reached for the dark centers, that warm hand burning my
cold hunger as he guided me to a chair. And then all around me I
saw faces blazing, faces rising in the smoke of the lamps, in the
shimmer of the burning stove, a wonderland of colors on canvases
surrounding us beneath the small, sloped roof, a blaze of beauty
that pulsed and throbbed. ‘Sit down, sit down…’ he said to me,
those feverish hands against my chest, clasped by my hands, yet
sliding away, my hunger rising in waves.
“And now I saw him at a distance, eyes intent, the palette in his
hand, the huge canvas obscuring the arm that moved. And
mindless and helpless, I sat there drifting with his paintings,
drifting with those adoring eyes, letting it go on and on till
Armand’s eyes were gone and Claudia was running down that
stone passage with clicking heels away from me, away from me.
“ ‘You are alive…’ I whispered. ‘Bones,’ he answered me.
‘Bones…’ And I saw them in heaps, taken from those shallow
graves in New Orleans as they are and put in chambers behind the
sepulcher so that another can be laid in that narrow plot. I felt my
eyes close; I felt my hunger become agony, my heart crying out
for a living heart; and then I felt him moving forward, hands out
to right my face—that fatal step, that fatal lurch. A sigh escaped
my lips. ‘Save yourself,’ I whispered to him. ‘Beware.’
“And then something happened in the moist radiance of his
face, something drained the broken vessels of his fragile skin. He
backed away from me, the brush falling from his hands. And I
rose over him, feeling my teeth against my lip, feeling my eyes ll
with the colors of his face, my ears ll with his struggling cry, my
hands ll with that strong, ghting esh until I drew him up to
me, helpless, and tore that esh and had the blood that gave it
life. ‘Die,’ I whispered when I held him loose now, his head
bowed against my coat, ‘die,’ and felt him struggle to look up at
me. And again I drank and again he fought, until at last he
slipped, limp and shocked and near to death, on the oor. Yet his
eyes did not close.
“I settled before his canvas, weak, at peace, gazing down at
him, at his vague, graying eyes, my own hands orid, my skin so
luxuriously warm. ‘I am mortal again,’ I whispered to him. ‘I am
alive. With your blood I am alive.’ His eyes closed. I sank back
against the wall and found myself gazing at my own face.
“A sketch was all he’d done, a series of bold black lines that
nevertheless made up my face and shoulders perfectly, and the
color was already begun in dabs and splashes: the green of my
eyes, the white of my cheek. But the horror, the horror of seeing
my expression! For he had captured it perfectly, and there was
nothing of horror in it. Those green eyes gazed at me from out of
that loosely drawn shape with a mindless innocence, the
expressionless wonder of that overpowering craving which he had
not understood. Louis of a hundred years ago lost in listening to
the sermon of the priest at Mass, lips parted and slack, hair
careless, a hand curved in the lap and limp. A mortal Louis. I
believe I was laughing, putting my hands to my face and laughing
so that the tears nearly rose in my eyes; and when I took my
ngers down, there was the stain of the tears, tinged with mortal
blood. And already there was begun in me the tingling of the
monster that had killed, and would kill again, who was gathering
up the painting now and starting to ee with it from the small
house.
“When suddenly, up from the oor, the man rose with an
animal groan and clutched at my boot, his hands sliding o the
leather. With some colossal spirit that deed me, he reached up
for the painting and held fast to it with his whitening hands. ‘Give
it back!’ he growled at me. ‘Give it back!’ And we held fast, the
two of us, I staring at him and at my own hands that held so
easily what he sought so desperately to rescue, as if he would take
it to heaven or hell; I the thing that his blood could not make
human, he the man that my evil had not overcome. And then, as
if I were not myself, I tore the painting loose from him and,
wrenching him up to my lips with one arm, gashed his throat in
rage.”
“Entering the rooms of the Hôtel Saint-Gabriel, I set the picture on
the mantel above the re and looked at it a long time. Claudia
was somewhere in the rooms, and some other presence intruded,
as though on one of the balconies above a woman or a man stood
near, giving o an unmistakable personal perfume. I didn’t know
why I had taken the picture, why I’d fought for it so that it
shamed me now worse than the death, and why I still held onto it
at the marble mantel, my head bowed, my hands visibly
trembling. And then slowly I turned my head. I wanted the rooms
to take shape around me; I wanted the owers, the velvet, the
candles in their sconces. To be mortal and trivial and safe. And
then, as if in a mist, I saw a woman there.
“She was seated calmly at that lavish table where Claudia
attended to her hair; and so still she sat, so utterly without fear,
her green taeta sleeves reected in the tilted mirrors, her skirts
reected, that she was not one still woman but a gathering of
women. Her dark-red hair was parted in the middle and drawn
back to her ears, though a dozen little ringlets escaped to make a
frame for her pale face. And she was looking at me with two
calm, violet eyes and a child’s mouth that seemed almost
obdurately soft, obdurately the Cupid’s bow unsullied by paint or
personality; and the mouth smiled now and said, as those eyes
seemed to re: ‘Yes, he’s as you said he would be, and I love him
already. He’s as you said.’ She rose now, gently lifting that
abundance of dark taeta, and the three small mirrors emptied at
once.
“And utterly baed and almost incapable of speech, I turned to
see Claudia far o on the immense bed, her small face rigidly
calm, though she clung to the silk curtain with a tight st.
‘Madeleine,’ she said under her breath, ‘Louis is shy.’ And she
watched with cold eyes as Madeleine only smiled when she said
this and, drawing closer to me, put both of her hands to the lace
fringe around her throat, moving it back so I could see the two
small marks there. Then the smile died on her lips, and they
became at once sullen and sensual as her eyes narrowed and she
breathed the word, ‘Drink.’
“I turned away from her, my st rising in a consternation for
which I couldn’t nd words. But then Claudia had hold of that st
and was looking up at me with relentless eyes. ‘Do it, Louis,’ she
commanded. ‘Because I cannot do it.’ Her voice was painfully
calm, all the emotion under the hard, measured tone. ‘I haven’t
the size, I haven’t the strength! You saw to that when you made
me! Do it!’
“I broke away from her, clutching my wrist as if she’d burned
it. I could see the door, and it seemed to me the better part of
wisdom to leave by it at once. I could feel Claudia’s strength, her
will, and the mortal woman’s eyes seemed are with that same
will. But Claudia held me, not with a gentle pleading, a miserable
coaxing that would have dissipated that power, making me feel
pity for her as I gathered my own forces. She held me with the
emotion her eyes had evinced even through her coldness and the
way that she turned away from me now, almost as if she’d been
instantly defeated. I did not understand the manner in which she
sank back on the bed, her head bowed, her lips moving feverishly,
her eyes rising only to scan the walls. I wanted to touch her and
say to her that what she asked was impossible; I wanted to soothe
that re that seemed to be consuming her from within.
“And the soft, mortal woman had settled into one of the velvet
chairs by the re, with the rustling and iridescence of her taeta
dress surrounding her like part of the mystery of her, of her
dispassionate eyes which watched us now, the fever of her pale
face. I remember turning to her, spurred on by that childish,
pouting mouth set against the fragile face. The vampire kiss had
left: no visible trace except the wound, no inalterable change on
the pale-pink esh. ‘How do we appear to you?’ I asked, seeing
her eyes on Claudia. She seemed excited by the diminutive
beauty, the awful woman’s-passion knotted in the small dimpled
hands.
“She broke her gaze and looked up at me. ‘I ask you…how do
we appear? Do you think us beautiful, magical, our white skin,
our erce eyes? Oh, I remember perfectly what mortal vision was,
the dimness of it, and how the vampire’s beauty burned through
that veil, so powerfully alluring, so utterly deceiving! Drink, you
tell me. You haven’t the vaguest conception under God of what
you ask!’
“But Claudia rose from the bed and came towards me. ‘How
dare you!’ she whispered. ‘How dare you make this decision for
both of us! Do you know how I despise you! Do you know that I
despise you with a passion that eats at me like a canker!’ Her
small form trembled, her hands hovering over the pleated bodice
of her yellow gown. ‘Don’t you look away from me! I am sick at
heart with your looking away, with your suering. You
understand nothing. Your evil is that you cannot be evil, and I
must suer for it. I tell you, I will suer no longer!’ Her ngers bit
into the esh of my wrist; I twisted, stepping back from her,
oundering in the face of the hatred, the rage rising like some
dormant beast in her, looking out through her eyes. ‘Snatching me
from mortal hands like two grim monsters in a nightmare fairy
tale, you idle, blind parents! Fathers!’ She spat the word. ‘Let tears
gather in your eyes. You haven’t tears enough for what you’ve
done to me. Six more mortal years, seven, eight…I might have
had that shape!’ Her pointed nger ew at Madeleine, whose
hands had risen to her face, whose eyes were clouded over. Her
moan was almost Claudia’s name. But Claudia did not hear her.
‘Yes, that shape, I might have known what it was to walk at your
side. Monsters! To give me immortality in this hopeless guise, this
helpless form!’ The tears stood in her eyes. The words had died
away, drawn in, as it were, on her breast.
“ ‘Now, you give her to me!’ she said, her head bowing, her
curls tumbling down to make a concealing veil. ‘You give her to
me. You do this, or you nish what you did to me that night in
the hotel in New Orleans. I will not live with this hatred any
longer, I will not live with this rage! I cannot. I will not abide it!’
And tossing her hair, she put her hands to her ears as if to stop
the sound of her own words, her breath drawn in rapid gasps, the
tears seeming to scald her cheeks.
“I had sunk to my knees at her side, and my arms were
outstretched as if to enfold her. Yet I dared not touch her, dared
not even say her name, lest my own pain break from me with the
rst syllable in a monstrous outpouring of hopelessly inarticulate
cries. ‘Oooh.’ She shook her head now, squeezing the tears out
onto her cheeks, her teeth clenched tight together. ‘I love you
still, that’s the torment of it. Lestat I never loved. But you! The
measure of my hatred is that love. They are the same! Do you
know now how much I hate you!’ She ashed at me through the
red lm that covered her eyes.
“ ‘Yes,’ I whispered. I bowed my head. But she was gone from
me into the arms of Madeleine, who enfolded her desperately, as
if she might protect Claudia from me—the irony of it, the pathetic
irony—protect Claudia from herself. She was whispering to
Claudia, ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry!’ her hands stroking Claudia’s face
and hair with a erceness that would have bruised a human child.
“But Claudia seemed lost against her breast suddenly, her eyes
closed, her face smooth, as if all passion were drained away from
her, her arm sliding up around Madeleine’s neck, her head falling
against the taeta and lace. She lay still, the tears staining her
cheeks, as if all this that had risen to the surface had left her weak
and desperate for oblivion, as if the room around her, as if I, were
not there.
“And there they were together, a tender mortal crying
unstintingly now, her warm arms holding what she could not
possibly understand, this white and erce and unnatural
childthing she believed she loved. And if I had not felt for her,
this mad and reckless woman irting with the damned, if I had
not felt all the sorrow for her I felt for my mortal self, I would
have wrested the demon thing from her arms, held it tight to me,
denying over and over the words I’d just heard. But I knelt there
still, thinking only, The love is equal to the hatred; gathering that
selshly to my own breast, holding onto that as I sank back
against the bed.
“A long time before Madeleine was to know it, Claudia had
ceased crying and sat still as a statue on Madeleine’s lap, her
liquid eyes xed on me, oblivious to the soft, red hair that fell
around her or the woman’s hand that still stroked her. And I sat
slumped against the bedpost, staring back at those vampire eyes,
unable and unwilling to speak in my defense. Madeleine was
whispering into Claudia’s ear, she was letting her tears fall into
Claudia’s tresses. And then gently, Claudia said to her, ‘Leave us.’
“ ‘No.’ She shook her head, holding tight to Claudia. And then
she shut her eyes and trembled all over with some terrible
vexation, some awful torment. But Claudia was leading her from
the chair, and she was now pliant and shocked and white-faced,
the green taeta ballooning around the small yellow silk dress.
“In the archway of the parlor they stopped, and Madeleine
stood as if confused, her hand at her throat, beating like a wing,
then going still. She looked about her like that hapless victim on
the stage of the Théâtre des Vampires who did not know where
she was. But Claudia had gone for something. And I saw her
emerge from the shadows with what appeared to be a large doll. I
rose on my knees to look at it. It was a doll, the doll of a little girl
with raven hair and green eyes, adorned with lace and ribbons,
sweet-faced and wide-eyed, its porcelain feet tinkling as Claudia
put it into Madeleine’s arms. And Madeleine’s eyes appeared to
harden as she held the doll, and her lips drew back from her teeth
in a grimace as she stroked its hair. She was laughing low under
her breath. ‘Lie down,’ Claudia said to her; and together they
appeared to sink into the cushions of the couch, the green taeta
rustling and giving way as Claudia lay with her and put her arms
around her neck. I saw the doll sliding, dropping to the oor, yet
Madeleine’s hand groped for it and held it dangling, her own head
thrown back, her eyes shut tight, and Claudia’s curls stroking her
face.
“I settled back on the oor and leaned against the soft siding of
the bed. Claudia was speaking now in a low voice, barely above a
whisper, telling Madeleine to be patient, to be still. I dreaded the
sound of her step on the carpet; the sound of the doors sliding
closed to shut Madeleine away from us, and the hatred that lay
between us like a killing vapor.
“But when I looked up to her, Claudia was standing there as if
transxed and lost in thought, all rancor and bitterness gone from
her face, so that she had the blank expression of that doll.
“ ‘All you’ve said to me is true,’ I said to her. ‘I deserve your
hatred. I’ve deserved it from those rst moments when Lestat put
you in my arms.’
“She seemed unaware of me, and her eyes were infused with a
soft light. Her beauty burned into my soul so that I could hardly
stand it, and then she said, wondering, ‘You could have killed me
then, despite him. You could have done it.’ Then her eyes rested
on me calmly. ‘Do you wish to do it now?’
“ ‘Do it now!’ I put my arm around her, moved her close to me,
warmed by her softened voice. ‘Are you mad, to say such things
to me? Do I want to do it now!’
“ ‘I want you to do it,’ she said. ‘Bend down now as you did
then, draw the blood out of me drop by drop, all you have the
strength for; push my heart to the brink. I am small, you can take
me. I won’t resist you, I am something frail you can crush like a
ower.’
“ ‘You mean these things? You mean what you say to me?’ I
asked. ‘Why don’t you place the knife here, why don’t you turn
it?’
“ ‘Would you die with me?’ she asked, with a sly, mocking
smile. ‘Would you in fact die with me?’ she pressed. ‘Don’t you
understand what is happening to me? That he’s killing me, that
master vampire who has you in thrall, that he won’t share your
love with me, not a drop of it? I see his power in your eyes. I see
your misery, your distress, the love for him you can’t hide. Turn
around, I’ll make you look at me with those eyes that want him,
I’ll make you listen.’
“ ‘Don’t anymore, don’t…I won’t leave you. I’ve sworn to you,
don’t you see? I cannot give you that woman.’
“ ‘But I’m ghting for my life! Give her to me so she can care
for me, complete the guise I must have to live! And he can have
you then! I am ghting for my life!’
“I all but shoved her o. ‘No, no, it’s madness, it’s witchery,’ I
said, trying to defy her. ‘It’s you who will not share me with him,
it’s you who want every drop of that love. If not from me, from
her. He overpowers you, he disregards you, and it’s you who wish
him dead the way that you killed Lestat. Well, you won’t make me
a party to this death, I tell you, not this death! I will not make her
one of us, I will not damn the legions of mortals who’ll die at her
hands if I do! Your power over me is broken. I will not!’
“Oh, if she could only have understood!
“Not for a moment could I truly believe her words against
Armand, that out of that detachment which was beyond revenge
he could selshly wish for her death. But that was nothing to me
now; something far more terrible than I could grasp was
happening, something I was only beginning to understand, against
which my anger was nothing but a mockery, a hollow attempt to
oppose her tenacious will. She hated me, she loathed me, as she
herself had confessed, and my heart shrivelled inside me, as if, in
depriving me of that love which had sustained me a lifetime, she
had dealt me a mortal blow. The knife was there. I was dying for
her, dying for that love as I was that very rst night when Lestat
gave her to me, turned her eyes to me, and told her my name;
that love which had warmed me in my self-hatred, allowed me to
exist. Oh, how Lestat had understood it, and now at last his plan
was undone.
“But it went beyond that, in some region from which I was
shrinking as I strode back and forth, back and forth, my hands
opening and closing at my sides, feeling not only that hatred in
her liquid eyes: It was her pain. She had shown me her pain! To
give me immortality in this hopeless guise, this helpless form. I put my
hands to my ears, as if she spoke the words yet, and the tears
owed. For all these years I had depended utterly upon her
cruelty, her absolute lack of pain! And pain was what she showed
to me, undeniable pain. Oh, how Lestat would have laughed at us.
That was why she had put the knife to him, because he would
have laughed. To destroy me utterly she need only show me that
pain. The child I made a vampire suered. Her agony was as my
own.
“There was a con in that other room, a bed for Madeleine, to
which Claudia retreated to leave me alone with what I could not
abide. I welcomed the silence. And sometime during the few
hours that remained of the night I found myself at the open
window, feeling the slow mist of the rain. It glistened on the
fronds of the ferns, on sweet white owers that listed, bowed, and
nally broke from their stems. A carpet of owers littering the
little balcony, the petals pounded softly by the rain. I felt weak
now, and utterly alone. What had passed between us tonight
could never be undone, and what had been done to Claudia by me
could never be undone.
“But I was somehow, to my own bewilderment, empty of all
regret. Perhaps it was the night, the starless sky, the gas lamps
frozen in the mist that gave some strange comfort for which I
never asked and didn’t know how, in this emptiness and
aloneness, to receive. I am alone, I was thinking. I am alone. It
seemed just, perfectly, and so to have a pleasing, inevitable form.
And I pictured myself then forever alone, as if on gaining that
vampire strength the night of my death I had left Lestat and never
looked back for him, as if I had moved on away from him, beyond
the need of him and anyone else. As if the night had said to me,
‘You are the night and the night alone understands you and
enfolds you in its arms.’ One with the shadows. Without
nightmare. An inexplicable peace.
“Yet I could feel the end of this peace as surely as I’d felt my
brief surrender to it, and it was breaking like the dark clouds. The
urgent pain of Claudia’s loss pressed in on me, behind me, like a
shape gathered from the corners of this cluttered and oddly alien
room. But outside, even as the night seemed to dissolve in a erce
driving wind, I could feel something calling to me, something
inanimate which I’d never known. And a power within me seemed
to answer that power, not with resistance but with an inscrutable,
chilling strength.
“I moved silently through the rooms, gently dividing the doors
until I saw, in the dim light cast by the ickering gas ames
behind me, that sleeping woman lying in my shadow on the
couch, the doll limp against her breast. Sometime before I knelt at
her side I saw her eyes open, and I could feel beyond her in the
collected dark those other eyes watching me, that breathless tiny
vampire face waiting.
“ ‘Will you care for her, Madeleine?’ I saw her hands clutch at
the doll, turning its face against her breast. And my own hand
went out for it, though I did not know why, even as she was
answering me.
“ ‘Yes!’ She repeated it again desperately.
“ ‘Is this what you believe her to be, a doll?’ I asked her, my
hand closing on the doll’s head, only to feel her snatch it away
from me, see her teeth clenched as she glared at me.
“ ‘A child who can’t die! That’s what she is,’ she said, as if she
were pronouncing a curse.
“ ‘Aaaaah…’ I whispered.
“ ‘I’ve done with dolls,’ she said, shoving it away from her into
the cushions of the couch. She was fumbling with something on
her breast, something she wanted me to see and not to see, her
ngers catching hold of it and closing over it. I knew what it was,
had noticed it before. A locket xed with a gold pin. I wish I
could describe the passion that infected her round features, how
her soft baby mouth was distorted.
“ ‘And the child who did die?’ I guessed, watching her. I was
picturing a doll shop, dolls with the same face. She shook her
head, her hand pulling hard on the locket so the pin ripped the
taeta. It was fear I saw in her now, a consuming panic. And her
hand bled as she opened it from the broken pin. I took the locket
from her ngers. ‘My daughter,’ she whispered, her lip trembling.
“It was a doll’s face on the small fragment of porcelain,
Claudia’s face, a baby face, a saccharine, sweet mockery of
innocence an artist had painted there, a child with raven hair like
the doll. And the mother, terried, was staring at the darkness in
front of her.
“ ‘Grief…’ I said gently.
“ ‘I’ve done with grief,’ she said, her eyes narrowing as she
looked up at me. ‘If you knew how I long to have your power; I’m
ready for it, I hunger for it.’ And she turned to me, breathing
deeply, so that her breast seemed to swell under her dress.
“A violent frustration rent her face then. She turned away from
me, shaking her head, her curls. ‘If you were a mortal man; man
and monster!’ she said angrily. ‘If I could only show you my
power…’ and she smiled malignantly, deantly at me ‘…I could
make you want me, desire me! But you’re unnatural!’ Her mouth
went down at the corners. ‘What can I give you! What can I do to
make you give me what you have!’ Her hand hovered over her
breasts, seeming to caress them like a man’s hand.
“It was strange, that moment; strange because I could never
have predicted the feeling her words incited in me, the way that I
saw her now with that small enticing waist, saw the round, plump
curve of her breasts and those delicate, pouting lips. She never
dreamed what the mortal man in me was, how tormented I was
by the blood I’d only just drunk. Desire her I did, more than she
knew; because she didn’t understand the nature of the kill. And
with a man’s pride I wanted to prove that to her, to humiliate her
for what she had said to me, for the cheap vanity of her
provocation and the eyes that looked away from me now in
disgust. But this was madness. These were not the reasons to
grant eternal life.
“And cruelly, surely, I said to her, ‘Did you love this child?’
“I will never forget her face then, the violence in her, the
absolute hatred. ‘Yes.’ She all but hissed the words at me. ‘How
dare you!’ She reached for the locket even as I clutched it. It was
guilt that was consuming her, not love. It was guilt—that shop of
dolls Claudia had described to me, shelves and shelves of the
egy of that dead child. But guilt that absolutely understood the
nality of death. There was something as hard in her as the evil in
myself, something as powerful. She had her hand out towards me.
She touched my waistcoat and opened her ngers there, pressing
them against my chest. And I was on my knees, drawing close to
her, her hair brushing my face.
“ ‘Hold fast to me when I take you,’ I said to her, seeing her
eyes grow wide, her mouth open. ‘And when the swoon is
strongest, listen all the harder for the beating of my heart. Hold
and say over and over, “I will live.” ’ ”
“ ‘Yes, yes,’ she was nodding, her heart pounding with her
excitement.
“Her hands burned on my neck, ngers forcing their way into
my collar. ‘Look beyond me at that distant light; don’t take your
eyes o of it, not for a second, and say over and over, “I will
live”.’
“She gasped as I broke the esh, the warm current coming into
me, her breasts crushed against me, her body arching up, helpless,
from the couch. And I could see her eyes, even as I shut my own,
see that taunting, provocative mouth. I was drawing on her, hard,
lifting her, and I could feel her weakening, her hands dropping
limp at her sides. ‘Tight, tight,’ I whispered over the hot stream of
her blood, her heart thundering in my ears, her blood swelling my
satiated veins. ‘The lamp,’ I whispered, ‘look at it!’ Her heart was
slowing, stopping, and her head dropped back from me on the
velvet, her eyes dull to the point of death. It seemed for a moment
I couldn’t move, yet I knew I had to, that someone else was lifting
my wrist to my mouth as the room turned round and round, that I
was focusing on that light as I had told her to do, as I tasted my
own blood from my own wrist, and then forced it into her mouth.
‘Drink it. Drink,’ I said to her. But she lay as if dead. I gathered
her close to me, the blood pouring over her lips. Then she opened
her eyes, and I felt the gentle pressure of her mouth, and then her
hands closing tight on the arm as she began to suck. I was rocking
her, whispering to her, trying desperately to break my swoon; and
then I felt her powerful pull. Every blood vessel felt it. I was
threaded through and through with her pulling, my hand holding
fast to the couch now, her heart beating erce against my heart,
her ngers digging deep into my arm, my outstretched palm. It
was cutting me, scoring me, so I all but cried out as it went on
and on, and I was backing away from her, yet pulling her with
me, my life passing through my arm, her moaning breath in time
with her pulling. And those strings which were my veins, those
searing wires pulled at my very heart harder and harder until,
without will or direction, I had wrenched free of her and fallen
away from her, clutching that bleeding wrist tight with my own
hand.
“She was staring at me, the blood staining her open mouth. An
eternity seemed to pass as she stared. She doubled and tripled in
my blurred vision, then collapsed into one trembling shape. Her
hand moved to her mouth, yet her eyes did not move but grew
large in her face as she stared. And then she rose slowly, not as if
by her own power but as if lifted from the couch bodily by some
invisible force which held her now, staring as she turned round
and round, her massive skirt moving sti as if she were all of a
piece, turning like some great carved ornament on a music box
that dances helplessly round and round to the music. And
suddenly she was staring down at the taeta, grabbing hold of it,
pressing it between her ngers so it zinged and rustled, and she
let it fall, quickly covering her ears, her eyes shut tight, then
opened wide again. And then it seemed she saw the lamp, the
distant, low gas lamp of the other room that gave a fragile light
through the double doors. And she ran to it and stood beside it,
watching it as if it were alive. ‘Don’t touch it…’ Claudia said to
her, and gently guided her away. But Madeleine had seen the
owers on the balcony and she was drawing close to them now,
her outstretched palms brushing the petals and then pressing the
droplets of rain to her face.
“I was hovering on the fringes of the room, watching her every
move, how she took the owers and crushed them in her hands
and let the petals fall all around her and how she pressed her
ngertips to the mirror and stared into her own eyes. My own
pain had ceased, a handkerchief bound the wound, and I was
waiting, waiting, seeing now that Claudia had no knowledge from
memory of what was to come next. They were dancing together,
as Madeleine’s skin grew paler and paler in the unsteady golden
light. She scooped Claudia into her arms, and Claudia rode round
in circles with her, her own small face alert and wary behind her
smile.
“And then Madeleine weakened. She stepped backwards and
seemed to lose her balance. But quickly she righted herself and let
Claudia go gently down to the ground. On tiptoe, Claudia
embraced her. ‘Louis.’ She signalled to me under her breath.
‘Louis….’
“I beckoned for her to come away. And Madeleine, not seeming
even to see us, was staring at her own outstretched hands. Her
face was blanched and drawn, and suddenly she was scratching at
her lips and staring at the dark stains on her ngertips. ‘No, no!’ I
cautioned her gently, taking Claudia’s hand and holding her close
to my side. A long moan escaped Madeleine’s lips.
“ ‘Louis,’ Claudia whispered in that preternatural voice which
Madeleine could not yet hear.
“ ‘She is dying, which your child’s mind can’t remember. You
were spared it, it left no mark on you,’ I whispered to her,
brushing the hair back from her ear, my eyes never leaving
Madeleine, who was wandering from mirror to mirror, the tears
owing freely now, the body giving up its life.
“ ‘But, Louis, if she dies…’ Claudia cried.
“ ‘No.’ I knelt down, seeing the distress in her small face. ‘The
blood was strong enough, she will live. But she will be afraid,
terribly afraid.’ And gently, rmly, I pressed Claudia’s hand and
kissed her cheek. She looked at me then with mingled wonder and
fear. And she watched me with that same expression as I
wandered closer to Madeleine, drawn by her cries. She reeled
now, her hands out, and I caught her and held her close. Her eyes
already burned with unnatural light, a violet re reected in her
tears.
“ ‘It’s mortal death, only mortal death,’ I said to her gently. ‘Do
you see the sky? We must leave it now and you must hold tight to
me, lie by my side. A sleep as heavy as death will come over my
limbs, and I won’t be able to solace you. And you will lie there
and you will struggle with it. But you hold tight to me in the
darkness, do you hear? You hold tight to my hands, which will
hold your hands as long as I have feeling.’
“She seemed lost for the moment in my gaze, and I sensed the
wonder that surrounded her, how the radiance of my eyes was the
radiance of all colors and how all those colors were all the more
reected for her in my eyes. I guided her gently to the con,
telling her again not to be afraid. ‘When you arise, you will be
immortal,’ I said. ‘No natural cause of death can harm you. Come,
lie down.’ I could see her fear of it, see her shrink from the
narrow box, its satin no comfort. Already her skin began to
glisten, to have that brilliance that Claudia and I shared. I knew
now she would not surrender until I lay with her.
“I held her and looked across the long vista of the room to
where Claudia stood, with that strange con, watching me. Her
eyes were still but dark with an undened suspicion, a cool
distrust. I set Madeleine down beside her bed and moved towards
those eyes. And, kneeling calmly beside her, I gathered Claudia in
my arms. ‘Don’t you recognize me?’ I asked her. ‘Don’t you know
who I am?’
“She looked at me. ‘No,’ she said.
“I smiled. I nodded. ‘Bear me no ill will,’ I said. ‘We are even.’
“At that she moved her head to one side and studied me
carefully, then seemed to smile despite herself and to nod in
assent.
“ ‘For you see,’ I said to her in that same calm voice, ‘what died
tonight in this room was not that woman. It will take her many
nights to die, perhaps years. What has died in this room tonight is
the last vestige in me of what was human.’
“A shadow fell over her face; clear, as if the composure were
rent like a veil. And her lips parted, but only with a short intake
of breath. Then she said, ‘Well, then you are right. Indeed. We are
even.’ ”
···
“ ‘I want to burn the doll shop!’
“Madeleine told us this. She was feeding to the re in the grate
the folded dresses of that dead daughter, white lace and beige
linen, crinkled shoes, bonnets that smelled of camphor balls and
sachet. ‘It means nothing now, any of it.’ She stood back watching
the re blaze. And she looked at Claudia with triumphant, ercely
devoted eyes.
“I did not believe her, so certain I was—even though night after
night I had to lead her away from men and women she could no
longer drain dry, so satiated was she with the blood of earlier
kills, often lifting her victims o their feet in her passion, crushing
their throats with her ivory ngers as surely as she drank their
blood—so certain I was that sooner or later this mad intensity
must abate, and she would take hold of the trappings of this
nightmare, her own luminescent esh, these lavish rooms of the
Hôtel Saint-Gabriel, and cry out to be awakened; to be free. She
did not understand it was no experiment; showing her edgling
teeth to the gilt-edged mirrors, she was mad.
“But I still did not realize how mad she was, and how
accustomed to dreaming; and that she would not cry out for
reality, rather would feed reality to her dreams, a demon elf
feeding her spinning wheel with the reeds of the world so she
might make her own weblike universe.
“I was just beginning to understand her avarice, her magic.
“She had a dollmaker’s craft from making with her old lover
over and over the replica of her dead child, which I was to
understand crowded the shelves of this shop we were soon to
visit. Added to that was a vampire’s skill and a vampire’s
intensity, so that in the space of one night when I had turned her
away from killing, she, with that same insatiable need, created
out of a few sticks of wood, with her chisel and knife, a perfect
rocking chair, so shaped and proportioned for Claudia that seated
in it by the re, she appeared a woman. To that must be added, as
the nights passed, a table of the same scale; and from a toy shop a
tiny oil lamp, a china cup and saucer; and from a lady’s purse a
little leather-bound book for notes which in Claudia’s hands
became a large volume. The world crumbled and ceased to exist
at the boundary of the small space which soon became the length
and breadth of Claudia’s dressing room: a bed whose posters
reached only to my breast buttons, and small mirrors that
reected only the legs of an unwieldy giant when I found myself
lost among them; paintings hung low for Claudia’s eye; and
nally, upon her little vanity table, black evening gloves for tiny
ngers, a woman’s low-cut gown of midnight velvet, a tiara from
a child’s masked ball. And Claudia, the crowning jewel, a fairy
queen with bare white shoulders wandering with her sleek tresses
among the rich items of her tiny world while I watched from the
doorway, spellbound, ungainly, stretched out on the carpet so I
could lean my head on my elbow and gaze up into my paramour’s
eyes, seeing them mysteriously softened for the time being by the
perfection of this sanctuary. How beautiful she was in black lace,
a cold, axen-haired woman with a kewpie doll’s face and liquid
eyes which gazed at me so serenely and so long that, surely, I
must have been forgotten; the eyes must be seeing something
other than me as I lay there on the oor dreaming; something
other than the clumsy universe surrounding me, which was now
marked o and nullied by someone who had suered in it,
someone who had suered always, but who was not seeming to
suer now, listening as it were to the tinkling of a toy music box,
putting a hand on the toy clock. I saw a vision of shortened hours
and little golden minutes. I felt I was mad.
“I put my hands under my head and gazed at the chandelier; it
was hard to disengage myself from one world and enter the other.
And Madeleine, on the couch, was working with that regular
passion, as if immortality could not conceivably mean rest, sewing
cream lace to lavender satin for the small bed, only stopping
occasionally to blot the moisture tinged with blood from her
white forehead.
“I wondered, if I shut my eyes, would this realm of tiny things
consume the rooms around me, and would I, like Gulliver, awake
to discover myself bound hand and foot, an unwelcome giant? I
had a vision of houses made for Claudia in whose garden mice
would be monsters, and tiny carriages, and owery shrubbery
become trees. Mortals would be so entranced, and drop to their
knees to look into the small windows. Like the spider’s web, it
would attract.
“I was bound hand and foot here. Not only by that fairy beauty
—that exquisite secret of Claudia’s white shoulders and the rich
luster of pearls, bewitching languor, a tiny bottle of perfume, now
a decanter, from which a spell is released that promises Eden—I
was bound by fear. That outside these rooms, where I supposedly
presided over the education of Madeleine—erratic conversations
about killing and vampire nature in which Claudia could have
instructed so much more easily than I, if she had ever showed the
desire to take the lead—that outside these rooms, where nightly I
was reassured with soft kisses and contented looks that the
hateful passion which Claudia had shown once and once only
would not return—that outside these rooms, I would nd that I
was, according to my own hasty admission, truly changed: the
mortal part of me was that part which had loved, I was certain. So
what did I feel then for Armand, the creature for whom I’d
transformed Madeleine, the creature for whom I had wanted to be
free? A curious and disturbing distance? A dull pain? A nameless
tremor? Even in this worldly clutter, I saw Armand in his monkish
cell, saw his dark-brown eyes, and felt that eerie magnetism.
“And yet I did not move to go to him. I did not dare discover
the extent of what I might have lost. Nor try to separate that loss
from some other oppressive realization: that in Europe I’d found
no truths to lessen loneliness, transform despair. Rather, I’d found
only the inner workings of my own small soul, the pain of
Claudia’s, and a passion for a vampire who was perhaps more evil
than Lestat, for whom I became as evil as Lestat, but in whom I
saw the only promise of good in evil of which I could conceive.
“It was all beyond me, nally. And so the clock ticked on the
mantel; and Madeleine begged to see the performances of the
Théâtre des Vampires and swore to defend Claudia against any
vampire who dared insult her; and Claudia spoke of strategy and
said, ‘Not yet, not now,’ and I lay back observing with some
measure of relief Madeleine’s love for Claudia, her blind covetous
passion. Oh, I have so little compassion in my heart or memory
for Madeleine. I thought she had only seen the rst vein of
suering; she had no understanding of death. She was so easily
sharpened, so easily driven to wanton violence. I supposed in my
colossal conceit and self-deception that my own grief for my dead
brother was the only true emotion. I allowed myself to forget how
totally I had fallen in love with Lestat’s iridescent eyes, that I’d
sold my soul for a many-colored and luminescent thing, thinking
that a highly reective surface conveyed the power to walk on
water.
“What would Christ need have done to make me follow Him
like Matthew or Peter? Dress well, to begin with. And have a
luxurious head of pampered yellow hair.
“I hate myself. And it seemed, lulled half to sleep as I was so
often by their conversation—Claudia whispering of killing and
speed and vampire craft, Madeleine bent over her singing needle
—it seemed then the only emotion of which I was still capable:
hatred of self. I love them. I hate them. I do not care if they are
there. Claudia puts her hands on my hair as if she wants to tell me
with the old familiarity that her heart’s at peace. I do not care.
And there is the apparition of Armand, that power, that
heartbreaking clarity. Beyond a glass, it seems. And taking
Claudia’s playful hand, I understand for the rst time in my life
what she feels when she forgives me for being myself whom she
says she hates and loves: she feels almost nothing.”
IT WAS A WEEK before we accompanied Madeleine on her errand, to
torch a universe of dolls behind a plate-glass window. I remember
wandering up the street away from it, round a turn into a narrow
cavern of darkness where the falling rain was the only sound. But
then I saw the red glare against the clouds. Bells clanged and men
shouted, and Claudia beside me was talking softly of the nature of
re. The thick smoke rising in that ickering glare unnerved me. I
was feeling fear. Not a wild, mortal fear, but something cold like a
hook in my side. This fear—it was the old town house burning in
the Rue Royale, Lestat in the attitude of sleep on the burning
oor.
“ ‘Fire puries…’ Claudia said. And I said, ‘No, re merely
destroys….’
“Madeleine had gone past us and was roaming at the top of the
street, a phantom in the rain, her white hands whipping the air,
beckoning to us, white arcs of white reies. And I remember
Claudia leaving me for her. The sight of wilted, writhing yellow
hair as she told me to follow. A ribbon fallen underfoot, apping
and oating in a swirl of black water. It seemed they were gone.
And I bent to retrieve that ribbon. But another hand reached out
for it. It was Armand who gave it to me now.
“I was shocked to see him there, so near, the gure of
Gentleman Death in a doorway, marvellously real in his black
cape and silk tie, yet ethereal as the shadows in his stillness.
There was the faintest glimmer of the re in his eyes, red
warming the blackness there to the richer brown.
“And I woke suddenly as if I’d been dreaming, woke to the
sense of him, to his hand enclosing mine, to his head inclined as if
to let me know he wanted me to follow—awoke to my own
excited experience of his presence, which consumed me as surely
as it had consumed me in his cell. We were walking together now,
fast, nearing the Seine, moving so swiftly and artfully through a
gathering of men that they scarce saw us, that we scarce saw
them. That I could keep up with him easily amazed me. He was
forcing me into some acknowledgment of my powers, that the
paths I’d normally chosen were human paths I no longer need
follow.
“I wanted desperately to talk to him, to stop him with both my
hands on his shoulders, merely to look into his eyes again as I’d
done that last night, to x him in some time and place, so that I
could deal with the excitement inside me. There was so much I
wanted to tell him, so much I wanted to explain. And yet I didn’t
know what to say or why I would say it, only that the fullness of
the feeling continued to relieve me almost to tears. This was what
I’d feared lost.
“I didn’t know where we were now, only that in my wanderings
I’d passed here before: a street of ancient mansions, of garden
walls and carriage doors and towers overhead and windows of
leaded glass beneath stone arches. Houses of other centuries,
gnarled trees, that sudden thick and silent tranquillity which
means that the masses are shut out; a handful of mortals inhabit
this vast region of high-ceilinged rooms; stone absorbs the sound
of breathing, the space of whole lives.
“Armand was atop a wall now, his arm against the overhanging
bough of a tree, his hand reaching for me; and in an instant I
stood beside him, the wet foliage brushing my face. Above, I
could see story after story rising to a lone tower that barely
emerged from the dark, teeming rain. ‘Listen to me; we are going
to climb to the tower,’ Armand was saying.
“ ‘I cannot…it’s impossible…!’
“ ‘You don’t begin to know your own powers. You can climb
easily. Remember, if you fall you will not be injured. Do as I do.
But note this. The inhabitants of this house have known me for a
hundred years and think me a spirit; so if by chance they see you,
or you see them through those windows, remember what they
believe you to be and show no consciousness of them lest you
disappoint them or confuse them. Do you hear? You are perfectly
safe.’
“I wasn’t sure what frightened me more, the climb itself or the
notion of being seen as a ghost; but I had no time for comforting
witticisms, even to myself. Armand had begun, his boots nding
the crack between the stones, his hands sure as claws in the
crevices; and I was moving after him, tight to the wall, not daring
to look down, clinging for a moment’s rest to the thick, carved
arch over a window, glimpsing inside, over a licking re, a dark
shoulder, a hand stroking with a poker, some gure that moved
completely without knowledge that it was watched. Gone. Higher
and higher we climbed, until we had reached the window of the
tower itself, which Armand quickly wrenched open, his long legs
disappearing over the sill; and I rose up after him, feeling his arm
out around my shoulders.
“I sighed despite myself, as I stood in the room, rubbing the
backs of my arms, looking around this wet, strange place. The
rooftops were silver below, turrets rising here and there through
the huge, rustling treetops; and far o glimmered the broken
chain of a lighted boulevard. The room seemed as damp as the
night outside. Armand was making a re.
“From a molding pile of furniture he was picking chairs,
breaking them into wood easily despite the thickness of their
rungs. There was something grotesque about him, sharpened by
his grace and the imperturbable calm of his white face. He did
what any vampire could do, cracking these thick pieces of wood
into splinters, yet he did what only a vampire could do. And there
seemed nothing human about him; even his handsome features
and dark hair became the attributes of a terrible angel who shared
with the rest of us only a supercial resemblance. The tailored
coat was a mirage. And though I felt drawn to him, more strongly
perhaps than I’d ever been drawn to any living creature save
Claudia, he excited me in other ways which resembled fear. I was
not surprised that, when he nished, he set a heavy oak chair
down for me, but retired himself to the marble mantelpiece and
sat there warming his hands over the re, the ames throwing red
shadows into his face.
“ ‘I can hear the inhabitants of the house,’ I said to him. The
warmth was good. I could feel the leather of my boots drying, feel
the warmth in my ngers.
“ ‘Then you know that I can hear them,’ he said softly; and
though this didn’t contain a hint of reproach, I realized the
implications of my own words.
“ ‘And if they come?’ I insisted, studying him.
“ ‘Can’t you tell by my manner that they won’t come?’ he asked.
‘We could sit here all night and never speak of them. I want you
to know that if we speak of them it is because you want to do so.’
And when I said nothing, when perhaps I looked a little defeated,
he said gently that they had long ago sealed o this tower and left
it undisturbed; and if in fact they saw the smoke from the
chimney or the light in the window, none of them would venture
up until tomorrow.
“I could see now there were several shelves of books at one side
of the replace, and a writing table. The pages on top were
wilted, but there was an inkstand and several pens. I could
imagine the room a very comfortable place when it was not
storming, as it was now, or after the re had dried out the air.
“ ‘You see,’ Armand said, ‘you really have no need of the rooms
you have at the hotel. You really have need of very little. But each
of us must decide how much he wants. These people in this house
have a name for me; encounters with me cause talk for twenty
years. They are only isolated instants in my time which mean
nothing. They cannot hurt me, and I use their house to be alone.
No one of the Théâtre des Vampires knows of my coming here.
This is my secret.’
“I had watched him intently as he was speaking, and thoughts
which had occurred to me in the cell at the theater occurred to
me again. Vampires do not age, and I wondered how his youthful
face and manner might dier now from what he had been a
century before or a century before that; for his face, though not
deepened by the lessons of maturity, was certainly no mask. It
seemed powerfully expressive as was his unobtrusive voice, and I
was at a loss nally to fully anatomize why. I knew only I was as
powerfully drawn to him as before; and to some extent the words
I spoke now were a subterfuge. ‘But what holds you to the Théâtre
des Vampires?’ I asked.
“ ‘A need, naturally. But I’ve found what I need,’ he said. ‘Why
do you shun me?’
“ ‘I never shunned you,’ I said, trying to hide the excitement
these words produced in me. ‘You understand I have to protect
Claudia, that she has no one but me. Or at least she had no one
until…’
“ ‘Until Madeleine came to live with you.…’
“ ‘Yes…’ I said.
“ ‘But now Claudia has released you, yet still you stay with her,
and stay bound to her as your paramour,’ he said.
“ ‘No, she’s no paramour of mine; you don’t understand,’ I said.
‘Rather, she’s my child, and I don’t know that she can release
me….’ These were thoughts I’d gone over and over in my mind. ‘I
don’t know if the child possesses the power to release the parent. I
don’t know that I won’t be bound to her for as long as she…’
“I stopped. I was going to say, ‘for as long as she lives.’ But I
realized it was a hollow mortal cliche. She would live forever, as I
would live forever. But wasn’t it so for mortal fathers? Their
daughters live forever because these fathers die rst. I was at a
loss suddenly; but conscious all the while of how Armand
listened; that he listened in the way that we dream of others
listening, his face seeming to reect on everything said. He did
not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to assert an
understanding of something before the thought was nished, or to
argue with a swift, irresistible impulse—the things which often
make dialogue impossible.
“And after a long interval he said, ‘I want you. I want you more
than anything in the world.’
“For a moment I doubted what I’d heard. It struck me as
unbelievable. And I was hopelessly disarmed by it, and the
wordless vision of our living together expanded and obliterated
every other consideration in my mind.
“ ‘I said that I want you. I want you more than anything in the
world,’ he repeated, with only a subtle change of expression. And
then he sat waiting, watching. His face was as tranquil as always,
his smooth, white forehead beneath the shock of his auburn hair
without a trace of care, his large eyes reecting on me, his lips
still.
“ ‘You want this of me, yet you don’t come to me,’ he said.
‘There are things you want to know, and you don’t ask. You see
Claudia slipping away from you, yet you seem powerless to
prevent it, and then you would hasten it, and yet you do nothing.’
“ ‘I don’t understand my own feelings. Perhaps they are clearer
to you than they are to me….’
“ ‘You don’t begin to know what a mystery you are!’ he said.
“ ‘But at least you know yourself thoroughly. I can’t claim that,’
I said. ‘I love her, yet I am not close to her. I mean that when I am
with you as I am now, I know that I know nothing of her, nothing
of anyone.’
“ ‘She’s an era for you, an era of your life. If and when you
break with her, you break with the only one alive who has shared
that time with you. You fear that, the isolation of it, the burden,
the scope of eternal life.’
“ ‘Yes, that’s true, but that’s only a small part of it. The era, it
doesn’t mean much to me. She made it mean something. Other
vampires must experience this and survive it, the passing of a
hundred eras.’
“ ‘But they don’t survive it,’ he said. ‘The world would be
choked with vampires if they survived it. How do you think I
come to be the eldest here or anywhere?’ he asked.
“I thought about this. And then I ventured, ‘They die by
violence?’
“ ‘No, almost never. It isn’t necessary. How many vampires do
you think have the stamina for immortality? They have the most
dismal notions of immortality to begin with. For in becoming
immortal they want all the forms of their life to be xed as they
are and incorruptible: carriages made in the same dependable
fashion, clothing of the cut which suited their prime, men attired
and speaking in the manner they have always understood and
valued. When, in fact, all things change except the vampire
himself; everything except the vampire is subject to constant
corruption and distortion. Soon, with an inexible mind, and
often even with the most exible mind, this immortality becomes
a penitential sentence in a madhouse of gures and forms that are
hopelessly unintelligible and without value. One evening a
vampire rises and realizes what he has feared perhaps for
decades, that he simply wants no more of life at any cost. That
whatever style or fashion or shape of existence made immortality
attractive to him has been swept o the face of the earth. And
nothing remains to oer freedom from despair except the act of
killing. And that vampire goes out to die. No one will nd his
remains. No one will know where he has gone. And often no one
around him—should he still seek the company of other vampires
—no one will know that he is in despair. He will have ceased long
ago to speak of himself or of anything. He will vanish.’
“I sat back impressed by the obvious truth of it, and yet at the
same time, everything in me revolted against that prospect. I
became aware of the depth of my hope and my terror; how very
dierent those feelings were from the alienation that he
described, how very dierent from that awful wasting despair.
There was something outrageous and repulsive in that despair
suddenly. I couldn’t accept it.
“ ‘But you wouldn’t allow such a state of mind in yourself. Look
at you,’ I found myself answering. ‘If there weren’t one single
work of art left in this world…and there are thousands…if there
weren’t a single natural beauty…if the world were reduced to one
empty cell and one fragile candle, I can’t help but see you
studying that candle, absorbed in the icker of its light, the
change of its colors…how long could that sustain you…what
possibilities would it create? Am I wrong? Am I such a crazed
idealist?’
“ ‘No,’ he said. There was a brief smile on his lips, an
evanescent ush of pleasure. But then he went on simply. ‘But
you feel an obligation to a world you love because that world for
you is still intact. It is conceivable your own sensitivity might
become the instrument of madness. You speak of works of art and
natural beauty. I wish I had the artist’s power to bring alive for
you the Venice of the fteenth century, my master’s palace there,
the love I felt for him when I was a mortal boy, and the love he
felt for me when he made me a vampire. Oh, if I could make those
times come alive for either you or me…for only an instant! What
would that be worth? And what a sadness it is to me that time
doesn’t dim the memory of that period, that it becomes all the
richer and more magical in light of the world I see today.’
“ ‘Love?’ I asked. ‘There was love between you and the vampire
who made you?’ I leaned forward.
“ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A love so strong he couldn’t allow me to grow
old and die. A love that waited patiently until I was strong
enough to be born to darkness. Do you mean to tell me there was
no bond of love between you and the vampire who made you?’
“ ‘None,’ I said quickly. I couldn’t repress a bitter smile.
“He studied me. ‘Why then did he give you these powers?’ he
asked.
“I sat back. ‘You see these powers as a gift!’ I said. ‘Of course
you do. Forgive me, but it amazes me, how in your complexity
you are so profoundly simple.’ I laughed.
“ ‘Should I be insulted?’ he smiled. And his whole manner only
conrmed me in what I’d just said. He seemed so innocent. I was
only beginning to understand him.
“ ‘No, not by me,’ I said, my pulse quickening as I looked at
him. ‘You’re everything I dreamed of when I became a vampire.
You see these powers as a gift!’ I repeated it. ‘But tell me…do you
now feel love for this vampire who gave you eternal life? Do you
feel this now?’
“He appeared to be thinking, and then he said slowly, ‘Why
does this matter?’ But went on: ‘I don’t think I’ve been fortunate
in feeling love for many people or many things. But yes, I love
him. Perhaps I do not love him as you mean. It seems you confuse
me, rather eortlessly. You are a mystery. I do not need him, this
vampire, anymore.’
“ ‘I was gifted with eternal life, with heightened perception, and
with the need to kill,’ I quickly explained, ‘because the vampire
who made me wanted the house I owned and my money. Do you
understand such a thing?’ I asked. ‘Ah, but there is so much else
behind what I say. It makes itself known to me so slowly, so
incompletely! You see, it’s as if you’ve cracked a door for me, and
light is streaming from that door and I’m yearning to get to it, to
push it back, to enter the region you say exists beyond it! When,
in fact, I don’t believe it! The vampire who made me was
everything that I truly believed evil to be: He was as dismal, as
literal, as barren, as inevitably eternally disappointing as I
believed evil had to be! I know that now. But you, you are
something totally beyond that conception! Open the door for me,
push it back all the way. Tell me about this palace in Venice, this
love aair with damnation. I want to understand it.’
“ ‘You trick yourself. The palace means nothing to you,’ he said.
‘The doorway you see leads to me, now. To your coming to live
with me as I am. I am evil with innite gradations and without
guilt.’
“ ‘Yes, exactly,’ I murmured.
“ ‘And this makes you unhappy,’ he said. ‘You, who came to me
in my cell and said there was only one sin left, the willful taking
of an innocent human life.’
“ ‘Yes…’ I said. ‘How you must have been laughing at me….’
“ ‘I never laughed at you,’ he said. ‘I cannot aord to laugh at
you. It is through you that I can save myself from the despair
which I’ve described to you as our death. It is through you that I
must make my link with this nineteenth century and come to
understand it in a way that will revitalize me, which I so
desperately need. It is for you that I’ve been waiting at the
Théâtre des Vampires. If I knew a mortal of that sensitivity, that
pain, that focus, I would make him a vampire in an instant. But
such can rarely be done. No, I’ve had to wait and watch for you.
And now I’ll ght for you. Do you see how ruthless I am in love?
Is this what you meant by love?’
“ ‘Oh, but you’d be making a terrible mistake,’ I said, looking
him in the eyes. His words were only slowly sinking in. Never had
I felt my all-consuming frustration to be so clear. I could not
conceivably satisfy him. I could not satisfy Claudia. I’d never been
able to satisfy Lestat. And my own mortal brother, Paul: How
dismally, mortally I had disappointed him!
“ ‘No. I must make contact with the age,’ he said to me calmly.
‘And I can do this through you…not to learn things from you
which I can see in a moment in an art gallery or read in an hour
in the thickest books…you are the spirit, you are the heart,’ he
persisted.
“ ‘No, no.’ I threw up my hands. I was on the point of a bitter,
hysterical laughter. ‘Don’t you see? I’m not the spirit of any age.
I’m at odds with everything and always have been! I have never
belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!’ It was too painful,
too perfectly true.
“But his face only brightened with an irresistible smile. He
seemed on the verge of laughing at me, and then his shoulders
began to move with this laughter. ‘But Louis,’ he said softly. ‘This
is the very spirit of your age. Don’t you see that? Everyone else
feels as you feel. Your fall from grace and faith has been the fall
of a century.’
“I was so stunned by this, that for a long time I sat there staring
into the re. It had all but consumed the wood and was a
wasteland of smoldering ash, a gray and red landscape that would
have collapsed at the touch of the poker. Yet it was very warm,
and still gave o powerful light. I saw my life in complete
perspective.
“ ‘And the vampires of the Théâtre…’ I asked softly.
“ ‘They reect the age in cynicism which cannot comprehend
the death of possibilities, fatuous sophisticated indulgence in the
parody of the miraculous, decadence whose last refuge is self-
ridicule, a mannered helplessness. You saw them; you’ve known
them all your life. You reect your age dierently. You reect its
broken heart.’
“ ‘This is unhappiness. Unhappiness you don’t begin to
understand.’
“ ‘I don’t doubt it. Tell me what you feel now, what makes you
unhappy. Tell me why for a period of seven days you haven’t
come to me, though you were burning to come. Tell me what
holds you still to Claudia and the other woman.’
“I shook my head. ‘You don’t know what you ask. You see, it
was immensely dicult for me to perform the act of making
Madeleine into a vampire. I broke a promise to myself that I
would never do this, that my own loneliness would never drive
me to do it. I don’t see our life as powers and gifts. I see it as a
curse. I haven’t the courage to die. But to make another vampire!
To bring this suering on another, and to condemn to death all
those men and women whom that vampire must subsequently
kill! I broke a grave promise. And in so doing…’
“ ‘But if it’s any consolation to you…surely you realize I had a
hand in it.’
“ ‘That I did it to be free of Claudia, to be free to come to you…
yes, I realize that. But the ultimate responsibility lies with me!’ I
said.
“ ‘No. I mean, directly. I made you do it! I was near you the
night you did it. I exerted my strongest power to persuade you to
do it. Didn’t you know this?
“ ‘No!’
“I bowed my head.
“ ‘I would have made this woman a vampire,’ he said softly.
‘But I thought it best you have a hand in it. Otherwise you would
not give Claudia up. You must know you wanted it….’
“ ‘I loathe what I did!’ I said.
“ ‘Then loathe me, not yourself.’
“ ‘No. You don’t understand. You nearly destroyed the thing
you value in me when this happened! I resisted you with all my
power when I didn’t even know it was your force which was
working on me. Something nearly died in me! Passion nearly died
in me! I was all but destroyed when Madeleine was created!’
“ ‘But that thing is no longer dead, that passion, that humanity,
whatever you wish to name it. If it were not alive there wouldn’t
be tears in your eyes now. There wouldn’t be rage in your voice,’
he said.
“For the moment, I couldn’t answer. I only nodded. Then I
struggled to speak again. ‘You must never force me to do
something against my will! You must never exert such power…’ I
stammered.
“ ‘No,’ he said at once. ‘I must not. My power stops somewhere
inside you, at some threshold. There I am powerless. However…
this creation of Madeleine is done. You are free.’
“ ‘And you are satised,’ I said, gaining control of myself. ‘I
don’t mean to be harsh. You have me. I love you. But I’m
mystied. You’re satised?’
“ ‘How could I not be?’ he asked. ‘I am satised, of course.’
“I stood up and went to the window. The last embers were
dying. The light came from the gray sky. I heard Armand follow
me to the window ledge. I could feel him beside me now, my eyes
growing more and more accustomed to the luminosity of the sky,
so that now I could see his prole and his eye on the falling rain.
The sound of the rain was everywhere and dierent: owing in
the gutter along the roof, tapping the shingles, falling softly
through the shimmering layers of tree branches, splattering on the
sloped stone sill in front of my hands. A soft intermingling of
sounds that drenched and colored all of the night.
“ ‘Do you forgive me…for forcing you with the woman?’ he
asked.
“ ‘You don’t need my forgiveness.’
“ ‘You need it,’ he said. ‘Therefore, I need it.’ His face was as
always utterly calm.
“ ‘Will she care for Claudia? Will she endure?’ I asked.
“ ‘She is perfect. Mad; but for these days that is perfect. She will
care for Claudia. She has never lived a moment of life alone; it is
natural to her that she be devoted to her companions. She need
not have particular reasons for loving Claudia. Yet, in addition to
her needs, she does have particular reasons. Claudia’s beautiful
surface, Claudia’s quiet, Claudia’s dominance and control. They
are perfect together. But I think…that as soon as possible they
should leave Paris.’
“ ‘Why?’
“ ‘You know why. Because Santiago and the other vampires
watch them with suspicion. All the vampires have seen
Madeleine. They fear her because she knows about them and they
don’t know her. They don’t let others alone who know about
them.’
“ ‘And the boy, Denis? What do you plan to do with him?’
“ ‘He’s dead,’ he answered.
“I was astonished. Both at his words and his calm. ‘You killed
him?’ I gasped.
“He nodded. And said nothing. But his large, dark eyes seemed
entranced with me, with the emotion, the shock I didn’t try to
conceal. His soft, subtle smile seemed to draw me close to him;
his hand closed over mine on the wet window sill and I felt my
body turning to face him, drawing nearer to him, as though I
were being moved not by myself but by him. ‘It was best,’ he
conceded to me gently. And then said, ‘We must go now….’ And
he glanced at the street below.
“ ‘Armand,’ I said. ‘I can’t.…’
“ ‘Louis, come after me,’ he whispered. And then on the ledge,
he stopped. ‘Even if you were to fall on the cobblestones there,’ he
said, ‘you would only be hurt for a while. You would heal so
rapidly and so perfectly that in days you would show no sign of it,
your bones healing as your skin heals; so let this knowledge free
you to do what you can so easily do already. Climb down, now.’
“ ‘What can kill me?’ I asked.
“Again he stopped. ‘The destruction of your remains,’ he said.
‘Don’t you know this? Fire, dismemberment…the heat of the sun.
Nothing else. You can be scarred, yes; but you are resilient. You
are immortal.’
“I was looking down through the quiet silver rain into darkness.
Then a light ickered beneath the shifting tree limbs, and the pale
beams of the light made the street appear. Wet cobblestones, the
iron hook of the carriage-house bell, the vines clinging to the top
of the wall. The huge black hulk of a carriage brushed the vines,
and then the light grew weak, the street went from yellow to
silver and vanished altogether, as if the dark trees had swallowed
it up. Or, rather, as if it had all been subtracted from the dark. I
felt dizzy. I felt the building move. Armand was seated on the
window sill looking down at me.
“ ‘Louis, come with me tonight,’ he whispered suddenly, with
an urgent inection.
“ ‘No,’ I said gently. ‘It’s too soon. I can’t leave them yet.’
“I watched him turn away and look at the dark sky. He
appeared to sigh, but I didn’t hear it. I felt his hand close on mine
on the window sill. ‘Very well…’ he said.
“ ‘A little more time…’ I said. And he nodded and patted my
hand as if to say it was all right. Then he swung his legs over and
disappeared. For only a moment I hesitated, mocked by the
pounding of my heart. But then I climbed over the sill and
commenced to hurry after him, never daring to look down.”
IT WAS VERY NEAR DAWN when I put my key into the lock at the hotel.
The gas light ared along the walls. And Madeleine, her needle
and thread in her hands, had fallen asleep by the grate. Claudia
stood still, looking at me from among the ferns at the window, in
shadow. She had her hairbrush in her hands. Her hair was
gleaming.
“I stood there absorbing some shock, as if all the sensual
pleasures and confusions of these rooms were passing over me
like waves and my body were being permeated with these things,
so dierent from the spell of Armand and the tower room where
we’d been. There was something comforting here, and it was
disturbing. I was looking for my chair. I was sitting in it with my
hands on my temples. And then I felt Claudia near me, and I felt
her lips against my forehead.
“ ‘You’ve been with Armand,’ she said. ‘You want to go with
him.’
“I looked up at her. How soft and beautiful her face was, and,
suddenly, so much mine. I felt no compunction in yielding to my
urge to touch her cheeks, to lightly touch her eyelids—
familiarities, liberties I hadn’t taken with her since the night of
our quarrel. ‘I’ll see you again; not here, in other places. Always
I’ll know where you are!’ I said.
“She put her arms around my neck. She held me tight, and I
closed my eyes and buried my face in her hair. I was covering her
neck with my kisses. I had hold of her round, rm little arms. I
was kissing them, kissing the soft indentation of the esh in the
crooks of her arms, her wrists, her open palms. I felt her ngers
stroking my hair, my face. ‘Whatever you wish,’ she vowed.
‘Whatever you wish.’
“ ‘Are you happy? Do you have what you want?’ I begged her.
“ ‘Yes, Louis.’ She held me against her dress, her ngers
clasping the back of my neck. ‘I have all that I want. But do you
truly know what you want?’ She was lifting my face so I had to
look into her eyes. ‘It’s you I fear for, you who might be making
the mistake. Why don’t you leave Paris with us!’ she said
suddenly. ‘We have the world, come with us!’
“ ‘No.’ I drew back from her. ‘You want it to be as it was with
Lestat. It can’t be that way again, ever. It won’t be.’
“ ‘It will be something new and dierent with Madeleine. I
don’t ask for that again. It was I who put an end to that,’ she said.
‘But do you truly understand what you are choosing in Armand?’
“I turned away from her. There was something stubborn and
mysterious in her dislike of him, in her failure to understand him.
She would say again that he wished her death, which I did not
believe. She didn’t realize what I realized: He could not want her
death, because I didn’t want it. But how could I explain this to her
without sounding pompous and blind in my love of him. ‘It’s
meant to be. It’s almost that sort of direction,’ I said, as if it were
just coming clear to me under the pressure of her doubts. ‘He
alone can give me the strength to be what I am. I can’t continue
to live divided and consumed with misery. Either I go with him,
or I die,’ I said. ‘And it’s something else, which is irrational and
unexplainable and which satises only me.…’
“ ‘…which is?’ she asked.
“ ‘That I love him,’ I said.
“ ‘No doubt you do,’ she mused. ‘But then, you could love even
me.’
“ ‘Claudia, Claudia.’ I held her close to me, and felt her weight
on my knee. She drew up close to my chest.
“ ‘I only hope that when you have need of me, you can nd
me…’ she whispered. ‘That I can get back to you…I’ve hurt you
so often, I’ve caused you so much pain.’ Her words trailed o. She
was resting still against me. I felt her weight, thinking, In a little
while, I won’t have her anymore. I want now simply to hold her.
There has always been such pleasure in that simple thing. Her
weight against me, this hand resting against my neck.
“It seemed a lamp died somewhere. That from the cool, damp
air that much light was suddenly, soundlessly subtracted. I was
sitting on the verge of dream. Had I been mortal I would have
been content to sleep there. And in that drowsy, comfortable state
I had a strange, habitual mortal feeling, that the sun would wake
me gently later and I would have that rich, habitual vision of the
ferns in the sunshine and the sunshine in the droplets of rain. I
indulged that feeling. I half closed my eyes.
“Often afterwards I tried to remember those moments. Tried
over and over to recall just what it was in those rooms as we
rested there, that began to disturb me, should have disturbed me.
How, being o my guard, I was somehow insensible to the subtle
changes which must have been taking place there. Long after,
bruised and robbed and embittered beyond my wildest dreams, I
sifted through those moments, those drowsy quiet early-hour
moments when the clock ticked almost imperceptibly on the
mantelpiece, and the sky grew paler and paler; and all I could
remember—despite the desperation with which I lengthened and
xed that time, in which I held out my hands to stop the clock—
all I could remember was the soft changing of light.
“On guard, I would never have let it pass. Deluded with larger
concerns, I made no note of it. A lamp gone out, a candle
extinguished by the shiver of its own hot pool of wax. My eyes
half shut, I had the sense then of impending darkness, of being
shut up in darkness.
“And then I opened my eyes, not thinking of lamps or candles.
And it was too late. I remember standing upright, Claudia’s hand
slipping on my arm, and the vision of a host of black-dressed men
and women moving through the rooms, their garments seeming to
garner light from every gilt edge or lacquered surface, seeming to
drain all light away I shouted out against them, shouted for
Madeleine, saw her wake with a start, terried edgling, clinging
to the arm of the couch, then down on her knees as they reached
out for her. There was Santiago and Celeste coming towards us,
and behind them, Estelle and others whose names I didn’t know
lling the mirrors and crowding together to make walls of
shifting, menacing shadow. I was shouting to Claudia to run,
having pulled back the door. I was shoving her through it and
then was stretched across it, kicking out at Santiago as he came.
“That weak defensive position I’d held against him in the Latin
Quarter was nothing compared to my strength now. I was too
awed perhaps to ever ght with conviction for my own
protection. But the instinct to protect Madeleine and Claudia was
overpowering. I remember kicking Santiago backwards and then
striking out at that powerful, beautiful Celeste, who sought to get
by me. Claudia’s feet sounded on the distant marble stairway.
Celeste was reeling, clawing at me, catching hold of me and
scratching my face so the blood ran down over my collar. I could
see it blazing in the corner of my eye. I was on Santiago now,
turning with him, aware of the awful strength of the arms that
held me, the hands that sought to get a hold on my throat. ‘Fight
them, Madeleine,’ I was shouting to her. But all I could hear was
her sobbing. Then I saw her in the whirl, a xed, frightened thing,
surrounded by other vampires. They were laughing that hollow
vampire laughter which is like tinsel or silverbells. Santiago was
clutching at his face. My teeth had drawn blood there. I struck at
his chest, at his head, the pain searing through my arm,
something enclosing my chest like two arms, which I shook o,
hearing the crash of broken glass behind me. But something else,
someone else had hold of my arm with two arms and was pulling
me with tenacious strength.
“I don’t remember weakening. I don’t remember any turning
point when anyone’s strength overcame my own. I remember
simply being outnumbered. Hopelessly, by sheer numbers and
persistence, I was stilled, surrounded, and forced out of the
rooms. In a press of vampires, I was being forced along the
passageway; and then I was falling down the steps, free for a
moment before the narrow back doors of the hotel, only to be
surrounded again and held tight. I could see Celeste’s face very
near me and, if I could have, I would have wounded her with my
teeth. I was bleeding badly, and one of my wrists was held so
tightly that there was no feeling in that hand. Madeleine was next
to me sobbing still. And all of us were pressed into a carriage.
Over and over I was struck, and still I did not lose consciousness. I
remember clinging tenaciously to consciousness, feeling these
blows on the back of my head, feeling the back of my head wet
with blood that trickled down my neck as I lay on the carriage
oor. I was thinking only, I can feel the carriage moving; I am
alive; I am conscious.
“And as soon as we were dragged into the Théâtre des
Vampires, I was crying out for Armand.
“I was let go, only to stagger on the cellar steps, the horde of
them behind me and in front of me, pushing me with menacing
hands. At one point I got hold of Celeste, and she screamed and
someone struck me from behind.
“And then I saw Lestat—the blow that was more crippling than
any blow. Lestat, standing there in the center of the ballroom,
erect, his gray eyes sharp and focused, his mouth lengthening in a
cunning smile. Impeccably dressed he was, as always, and as
splendid in his rich black cloak and ne linen. But those scars still
scored every inch of his white esh. And how they distorted the
taut, handsome face, the ne, hard threads cutting the delicate
skin above his lip, the lids of his eyes, the smooth rise of his
forehead. And the eyes, they burned with a silent rage that
seemed infused with vanity, an awful relentless vanity that said,
‘See what I am!’
“ ‘This is the one?’ said Santiago, thrusting me forward.
“But Lestat turned sharply to him and said in a harsh low voice,
‘I told you I wanted Claudia, the child! She was the one!’ And now
I saw his head moving involuntarily with his outburst, and his
hand reaching out as if for the arm of a chair only to close as he
drew himself up again, eyes to me.
“ ‘Lestat,’ I began, seeing now the few straws left to me. ‘You
are alive! You have your life! Tell them how you treated us.…’
“ ‘No,’ he shook his head furiously. ‘You come back to me,
Louis,’ he said.
“For a moment I could not believe my ears. Some saner, more
desperate part of me said, Reason with him, even as the sinister
laughter erupted from my lips. ‘Are you mad!’
“ ‘I’ll give you back your life!’ he said, his eyelids quivering
with the stress of his words, his chest heaving, that hand going
out again and closing impotently in the dark. ‘You promised me,’
he said to Santiago, ‘I could take him back with me to New
Orleans.’ And then, as he looked from one to the other of them as
they surrounded us, his breath became frantic, and he burst out,
‘Claudia, where is she? She’s the one who did it to me, I told you!’
“ ‘By and by,’ said Santiago. And when he reached out for
Lestat, Lestat drew back and almost lost his balance. He had
found the chair arm he needed and stood holding fast to it, his
eyes closed, regaining his control.
“ ‘But he helped her, aided her…’ said Santiago, drawing nearer
to him. Lestat looked up.
“ ‘No,’ he said. ‘Louis, you must come back to me. There’s
something I must tell you…about that night in the swamp.’ But
then he stopped and looked about again, as though he were
caged, wounded, desperate.
“ ‘Listen to me, Lestat,’ I began now. ‘You let her go, you free
her…and I will…I’ll return to you,’ I said, the words sounding
hollow, metallic. I tried to take a step towards him, to make my
eyes hard and unreadable, to feel my power emanating from them
like two beams of light. He was looking at me, studying me,
struggling all the while against his own fragility. And Celeste had
her hand on my wrist. ‘You must tell them,’ I went on, ‘how you
treated us, that we didn’t know the laws, that she didn’t know of
other vampires,’ I said. And I was thinking steadily, as that
mechanical voice came out of me: Armand must return tonight,
Armand must come back. He will stop this, he won’t let it go on.
“There was a sound then of something dragging across the
oor. I could hear Madeleine’s exhausted crying. I looked around
and saw her in a chair, and when she saw my eyes on her, her
terror seemed to increase. She tried to rise but they stopped her.
‘Lestat,’ I said. ‘What do you want of me? I’ll give it to you.…’
“And then I saw the thing that was making the noise. And
Lestat had seen it too. It was a con with large iron locks on it
that was being dragged into the room. I understood at once.
‘Where is Armand?’ I said desperately.
“ ‘She did it to me, Louis. She did it to me. You didn’t! She has
to die!’ said Lestat, his voice becoming thin, rasping, as if it were
an eort for him to speak. ‘Get that thing away from here, he’s
coming home with me,’ he said furiously to Santiago. And
Santiago only laughed, and Celeste laughed, and the laughter
seemed to infect them all.
“ ‘You promised me,’ said Lestat to them.
“ ‘I promised you nothing,’ said Santiago.
“ ‘They’ve made a fool of you,’ I said to him bitterly as they
were opening the con. ‘A fool of you! You must reach Armand,
Armand is the leader here,’ I burst out. But he didn’t seem to
understand.
“What happened then was desperate and clouded and
miserable, my kicking at them, struggling to free my arms, raging
against them that Armand would stop what they were doing, that
they dare not hurt Claudia. Yet they forced me down into the
con, my frantic eorts serving no purpose against them except
to take my mind o the sound of Madeleine’s cries, her awful
wailing cries, and the fear that at any moment Claudia’s cries
might be added to them. I remember rising against the crushing
lid, holding it at bay for an instant before it was forced shut on
me and the locks were being shut with the grinding of metal and
keys. Words of long ago came back to me, a strident and smiling
Lestat in that faraway, trouble-free place where the three of us
had quarrelled together: ‘A starving child is a frightful sight…a
starving vampire even worse. They’d hear her screams in Paris.’
And my wet and trembling body went limp in the suocating
con, and I said, Armand will not let it happen; there isn’t a
place secure enough for them to place us.
“The con was lifted, there was the scraping of boots, the
swinging from side to side; my arms braced against the sides of
the box, my eyes shut perhaps for a moment, I was uncertain. I
told myself not to reach out for the sides, not to feel the thin
margin of air between my face and the lid; and I felt the con
swing and tilt as their steps found the stairs. Vainly I tried to
make out Madeleine’s cries, for it seemed that she was crying for
Claudia, calling out to her as if she could help us all. Call for
Armand; he must come home this night, I thought desperately.
And only the thought of the awful humiliation of hearing my own
cry closed in with me, ooding my ears, yet locked in with me,
prevented me from calling out.
“But another thought had come over me even as I’d phrased
those words: What if he did not come? What if somewhere in that
mansion he had a con hidden to which he returned…? And then
it seemed my body broke suddenly, without warning, from the
control of my mind, and I ailed at the wood around me,
struggling to turn over and pit the strength of my back against the
con lid. Yet I could not: it was too close; and my head fell back
on the boards, and the sweat poured down my back and sides.
“Madeleine’s cries were gone. All I heard were the boots, and
my own breathing. Then, tomorrow night he will come—yes,
tomorrow night—and they will tell him, and he will nd us and
release us. The con swayed. The smell of water lled my
nostrils, its coolness palpable through the close heat of the con;
and then with the smell of the water was the smell of the deep
earth. The con was set down roughly, and my limbs ached and I
rubbed the backs of my arms with my hands, struggling not to
touch the con lid, not to sense how close it was, afraid of my
own fear rising to panic, to terror.
“I thought they would leave me now, but they did not. They
were near at hand and busy, and another odor came to my
nostrils which was raw and not known to me. But then, as I lay
very still, I realized they were laying bricks and that the odor
came from the mortar. Slowly, carefully, I brought my hand up to
wipe my face. All right, then, tomorrow night, I reasoned with
myself, even as my shoulders seemed to grow large against the
con walls. All right, then, tomorrow night he will come; and
until then this is merely the connes of my own con, the price
I’ve paid for all of this, night after night after night.
“But the tears were welling in my eyes, and I could see myself
ailing again at the wood; and my head was turning from side to
side, my mind rushing on to tomorrow and the night after and the
night after that. And then, as if to distract myself from this
madness, I thought of Claudia—only to feel her arms around me
in the dim light of those rooms in the Hôtel Saint-Gabriel, only to
see the curve of her cheek in the light, the soft, languid utter of
her eyelashes, the silky touch of her lip. My body stiened, my
feet kicked at the boards. The sound of the bricks was gone, and
the mued steps were gone. And I cried out for her, ‘Claudia,’
until my neck was twisted with pain as I tossed, and my nails had
dug into my palms; and slowly, like an icy stream, the paralysis of
sleep came over me. I tried to call out to Armand—foolishly,
desperately, only dimly aware as my lids grew heavy and my
hands lay limp that the sleep was on him too somewhere, that he
lay still in his resting place. One last time I struggled. My eyes
saw the dark, my hands felt the wood. But I was weak. And then
there was nothing.”
I AWOKE TO A VOICE. It was distant but distinct. It said my name twice.
For an instant I didn’t know where I was. I’d been dreaming,
something desperate which was threatening to vanish completely
without the slightest clue to what it had been, and something
terrible which I was eager, willing to let go. Then I opened my
eyes and felt the top of the con. I knew where I was at the same
instant that, mercifully, I knew it was Armand who was calling
me. I answered him, but my voice was locked in with me and it
was deafening. In a moment of terror, I thought, He’s searching
for me, and I can’t tell him that I am here. But then I heard him
speaking to me, telling me not to be afraid. And I heard a loud
noise. And another. And there was a cracking sound, and then the
thunderous falling of the bricks. It seemed several of them struck
the con. And then I heard them lifted o one by one. It sounded
as though he were pulling o the locks by the nails.
“The hard wood of the top creaked. A pinpoint of light sparkled
before my eyes. I drew breath from it, and felt the sweat break
out on my face. The lid creaked open and for an instant I was
blinded; then I was sitting up, seeing the bright light of a lamp
through my ngers.
“ ‘Hurry,’ he said to me. ‘Don’t make a sound.’
“ ‘But where are we going?’ I asked. I could see a passage of
rough bricks stretching out from the doorway he’d broken down.
And all along that passage were doors which were sealed, as this
door had been. I had a vision at once of cons behind those
bricks, of vampires starved and decayed there. But Armand was
pulling me up, telling me again to make no sound; we were
creeping along the passage. He stopped at a wooden door, and
then he extinguished the lamp. It was completely black for an
instant until the seam of light beneath the door brightened. He
opened the door so gently the hinges did not make a sound. I
could hear my own breathing now, and I tried to stop it. We were
entering that lower passageway which led to his cell. But as I
raced along behind him I became aware of one awful truth. He
was rescuing me, but me alone. I put out my hand to stop him,
but he only pulled me after him. Only when we stood in the
alleyway beside the Théâtre des Vampires was I able to make him
stop. And even then, he was on the verge of going on. He began
shaking his head even before I spoke.
“ ‘I can’t save her!’ he said.
“ ‘You don’t honestly expect me to leave without her! They
have her in there!’ I was horried. ‘Armand, you must save her!
You have no choice!’
“ ‘Why do you say this?’ he answered. ‘I don’t have the power,
you must understand. They’ll rise against me. There is no reason
why they should not. Louis, I tell you, I cannot save her. I will
only risk losing you. You can’t go back.’
“I refused to admit this could be true. I had no hope other than
Armand. But I can truthfully say that I was beyond being afraid. I
knew only that I had to get Claudia back or die in the eort. It
was really very simple; not a matter of courage at all. And I knew
also, could tell in everything about Armand’s passivity, the
manner in which he spoke, that he would follow me if I returned,
that he would not try to prevent me.
“I was right. I was rushing back into the passage and he was
just behind me, heading for the stairway to the ballroom. I could
hear the other vampires. I could hear all manner of sounds. The
Paris trac. What sounded very much like a congregation in the
vault of the theater above. And then, as I reached the top of the
steps, I saw Celeste in the door of the ballroom. She held one of
those stage masks in her hand. She was merely looking at me. She
did not appear alarmed. In fact, she appeared strangely
indierent.
“If she had rushed at me, if she had sounded a general alarm,
these things I could have understood. But she did nothing. She
stepped backwards into the ballroom; she turned, seeming to
enjoy the subtle movement of her skirts, seeming to turn for the
love of making her skirts are out, and she drifted in a widening
circle to the center of the room. She put the mask to her face, and
said softly behind the painted skull, ‘Lestat…it is your friend Louis
come calling. Look sharp, Lestat!’ She dropped the mask, and
there was a ripple of laughter from somewhere. I saw they were
all about the room, shadowy things, seated here and there,
standing together. And Lestat, in an armchair, sat with his
shoulders hunched and his face turned away from me. It seemed
he was working something with his hands, something I couldn’t
see; and slowly he looked up, his full yellow hair falling into his
eyes. There was fear in them. It was undeniable. Now he was
looking at Armand. And Armand was moving silently through the
room with slow, steady steps, and all of the vampires moved back
away from him, watching him. ‘Bonsoir, Monsieur,’ Celeste bowed
to him as he passed her, that mask in her hand like a scepter. He
did not look at her in particular. He looked down at Lestat. ‘Are
you satised?’ he asked him.
“Lestat’s gray eyes seemed to regard Armand with wonder, and
his lips struggled to form a word. I could see that his eyes were
lling with tears. ‘Yes…’ he whispered now, his hand struggling
with the thing he concealed beneath his black cloak. But then he
looked at me, and the tears spilled down his face. ‘Louis,’ he said,
his voice deep and rich now with what seemed an unbearable
struggle. ‘Please, you must listen to me. You must come back….’
And then, bowing his head, he grimaced with shame.
“Santiago was laughing somewhere. Armand was saying softly
to Lestat that he must get out, leave Paris; he was outcast.
“And Lestat sat there with his eyes closed, his face transgured
with his pain. It seemed the double of Lestat, some wounded,
feeling creature I’d never known. ‘Please,’ he said, the voice
eloquent and gentle as he implored me.
“ ‘I can’t talk to you here! I can’t make you understand. You’ll
come with me…for only a little while…until I am myself again?’
“ ‘This is madness!…’ I said, my hands rising suddenly to my
temples. ‘Where is she! Where is she! I looked about me, at their
still, passive faces, those inscrutable smiles. ‘Lestat.’ I turned him
now, grabbing at the black wool of his lapels.
“And then I saw the thing in his hands. I knew what it was. And
in an instant I’d ripped it from him and was staring at it, at the
fragile silken thing that it was—Claudia’s yellow dress. His hand
rose to his lips, his face turned away. And the soft, subdued sobs
broke from him as he sat back while I stared at him, while I stared
at the dress. My ngers moved slowly over the tears in it, the
stains of blood, my hands closing, trembling as I crushed it
against my chest.
“For a long moment it seemed I simply stood there; time had no
bearing upon me nor upon those shifting vampires with their
light, ethereal laughter lling my ears. I remember thinking that I
wanted to put my hands over my ears, but I wouldn’t let go of the
dress, couldn’t stop trying to make it so small that it was hidden
within my hands. I remember a row of candles burning, an
uneven row coming to light one by one against the painted walls.
A door stood open to the rain, and all the candles spluttered and
blew on the wind as if the ames were being lifted from the
wicks. But they clung to the wicks and were all right. I knew that
Claudia was through the doorway. The candles moved. The
vampires had hold of them. Santiago had a candle and was
bowing to me and gesturing for me to pass through the door. I
was barely aware of him. I didn’t care about him or the others at
all. Something in me said, If you care about them you will go
mad. And they don’t matter, really. She matters. Where is she?
Find her. And their laughter was remote, and it seemed to have a
color and a shape but to be part of nothing.
“Then I saw something through the open doorway which was
something I’d seen before, a long, long time ago. No one knew of
this thing I’d seen years before except myself. No. Lestat knew.
But it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t know now or understand. That
he and I had seen this thing, standing at the door of that brick
kitchen in the Rue Royale, two wet shrivelled things that had
been alive, mother and daughter in one another’s arms, the
murdered pair on the kitchen oor. But these two lying under the
gentle rain were Madeleine and Claudia, and Madeleine’s lovely
red hair mingled with the gold of Claudia’s hair, which stirred
and glistened in the wind that sucked through the open doorway.
Only that which was living had been burnt away—not the hair,
not the long, empty velvet dress, not the small blood-stained
chemise with its eyelets of white lace. And the blackened, burnt,
and drawn thing that was Madeleine still bore the stamp of her
living face, and the hand that clutched at the child was whole like
a mummy’s hand. But the child, the ancient one, my Claudia, was
ashes.
“A cry rose in me, a wild, consuming cry that came from the
bowels of my being, rising up like the wind in that narrow place,
the wind that swirled the rain teeming on those ashes, beating at
the trace of a tiny hand against the bricks, that golden hair lifting,
those loose strands rising, ying upwards. And a blow struck me
even as I cried out; and I had hold of something that I believed to
be Santiago, and I was pounding against him, destroying him,
twisting that grinning white face around with hands from which
he couldn’t free himself, hands against which he railed, crying
out, his cries mingling with my cries, his boots coming down into
those ashes, as I threw him backwards away from them, my own
eyes blinded with the rain, with my tears, until he lay back away
from me, and I was reaching out for him even as he held out his
hand. And the one I was struggling against was Armand. Armand,
who was forcing me out of the tiny graveyard into the whirling
colors of the ballroom, the cries, the mingling voices, that searing,
silver laughter.
“And Lestat was calling out, ‘Louis, wait for me; Louis, I must
talk to you!’
“I could see Armand’s rich, brown eyes close to mine, and I felt
weak all over and vaguely aware that Madeleine and Claudia
were dead, his voice saying softly, perhaps soundlessly, ‘I could
not prevent it, I could not prevent it.…’ And they were dead,
simply dead. And I was losing consciousness. Santiago was near
them somewhere, there where they were still, that hair lilted on
the wind, swept across those bricks, unraveling locks. But I was
losing consciousness.
“I could not gather their bodies up with me, could not take
them out. Armand had his arm around my back, his hand under
my arm, and he was all but carrying me through some hollow
wooden echoing place, and the smells of the street were rising,
the fresh smell of the horses and the leather, and there were the
gleaming carriages stopped there. And I could see myself clearly
running down the Boulevard des Capucines with a small con
under my arm and the people making way for me and dozens of
people rising around the crowded tables of the open cafe and a
man lifting his arm. It seemed I stumbled then, the Louis whom
Armand held in his arm, and again I saw his brown eyes looking
at me, and felt that drowsiness, that sinking. And yet I walked, I
moved, I saw the gleam of my own boots on the pavement. ‘Is he
mad, that he says these things to me?’ I was asking of Lestat, my
voice shrill and angry, even the sound of it giving me some
comfort. I was laughing, laughing loudly. ‘He’s stark-raving mad
to speak to me in this manner! Did you hear him?’ I demanded.
And Armand’s eye said, Sleep. I wanted to say something about
Madeleine and Claudia, that we could not leave them there, and I
felt that cry again rising inside of me, that cry that pushed
everything else out of its way, my teeth clenched to keep it in,
because it was so loud and so full it would destroy me if I let it
go.
“And then I conceived of everything too clearly. We were
walking now, a belligerent, blind sort of walking that men do
when they are wildly drunk and lled with hatred for others,
while at the same time they feel invincible. I was walking in such
a manner through New Orleans the night I’d rst encountered
Lestat, that drunken walking which is a battering against things,
which is miraculously sure-footed and nds its path. I saw a
drunken man’s hands fumbling miraculously with a match. Flame
touched to the pipe, the smoke drawn in. I was standing at a cafe
window. The man was drawing on his pipe. He was not at all
drunk. Armand stood beside me waiting, and we were in the
crowded Boulevard des Capucines. Or was it the Boulevard du
Temple? I wasn’t sure. I was outraged that their bodies remained
there in that vile place. I saw Santiago’s foot touching the
blackened burned thing that had been my child! I was crying out
through clenched teeth, and the man had risen from his table and
steam spread out on the glass in front of his face. ‘Get away from
me,’ I was saying to Armand. ‘Damn you into hell, don’t come
near me. I warn you, don’t come near me.’ I was walking away
from him up the boulevard, and I could see a man and a woman
stepping aside for me, the man with his arm out to protect the
woman.
“Then I was running. People saw me running. I wondered how
it appeared to them, what wild, white thing they saw that moved
too fast for their eyes. I remember that by the time I stopped, I
was weak and sick, and my veins were burning as if I were
starved. I thought of killing, and the thought lled me with
revulsion. I was sitting on the stone steps beside a church, at one
of those small side doors, carved into the stone, which was bolted
and locked for the night. The rain had abated. Or so it seemed.
And the street was dreary and quiet, though a man passed a long
way o with a bright, black umbrella. Armand stood at a distance
under the trees. Behind him it seemed there was a great expanse
of trees and wet grasses and mist rising as if the ground were
warm.
“By thinking of only one thing, the sickness in my stomach and
head and the tightening in my throat, was I able to return to a
state of calm. By the time these things had died away and I was
feeling clear again, I was aware of all that had happened, the
great distance we’d come from the theater, and that the remains
of Madeleine and Claudia were still there. Victims of a holocaust
in each other’s arms. And I felt resolute and very near to my own
destruction.
“ ‘I could not prevent it,’ Armand said softly to me. And I
looked up to see his face unutterably sad. He looked away from
me as if he felt it was futile to try to convince me of this, and I
could feel his overwhelming sadness, his near defeat. I had the
feeling that if I were to vent all my anger on him he would do
little to resist me. And I could feel that detachment, that passivity
in him as something pervasive which was at the root of what he
insisted to me again, ‘I could not have prevented it.’
“ ‘Oh, but you could have prevented it!’ I said softly. ‘You know
full well that you could have. You were the leader! You were the
only one who knew the limits of your own power. They didn’t
know. They didn’t understand. Your understanding surpassed
theirs.’
“He looked away still. But I could see the eect of my words on
him. I could see the weariness in his face, the dull lusterless
sadness of his eyes.
“ ‘You held sway over them. They feared you!’ I went on. ‘You
could have stopped them if you’d been willing to use that power
even beyond your own self-prescribed limits. It was your sense of
yourself you would not violate. Your own precious conception of
truth! I understand you perfectly. I see in you the reection of
myself!’
“His eyes moved gently to engage mine. But he said nothing.
The pain of his face was terrible. It was softened and desperate
with pain and on the verge of some terrible explicit emotion he
would not be able to control. He was in fear of that emotion. I
was not. He was feeling my pain with that great spellbinding
power of his which surpassed mine. I was not feeling his pain. It
did not matter to me.
“ ‘I understand you only too well…’ I said. ‘That passivity in me
has been the core of it all, the real evil. That weakness, that
refusal to compromise a fractured and stupid morality, that awful
pride! For that, I let myself become the thing I am, when I knew it
was wrong. For that, I let Claudia become the vampire she
became, when I knew it was wrong. For that, I stood by and let
her kill Lestat, when I knew that was wrong, the very thing that
was her undoing. I lifted not a nger to prevent it. And
Madeleine, Madeleine, I let her come to that, when I should never
have made her a creature like ourselves. I knew that was wrong!
Well, I tell you I am no longer that passive, weak creature that
has spun evil from evil till the web is vast and thick while I
remain its stultied victim. It’s over! I know now what I must do.
And I warn you, for whatever mercy you’ve shown me in digging
me out of that grave tonight where I would have died: Do not
seek your cell in the Théâtre des Vampires again. Do not go near
it.’ ”
“I didn’t wait to hear his answer. Perhaps he never attempted one.
I don’t know. I left him without looking back. If he followed me I
was not conscious of it. I did not seek to know. I did not care.
“It was to the cemetery in Montmartre that I retreated. Why
that place, I’m not certain, except that it wasn’t far from the
Boulevard des Capucines, and Montmartre was countryed then,
and dark and peaceful compared to the metropolis. Wandering
among the low houses with their kitchen gardens, I killed without
the slightest measure of satisfaction, and then sought out the
con where I was to lie by day in the cemetery. I scraped the
remains out of it with my bare hands and lay down to a bed of
foulness, of damp, of the stench of death. I cannot say this gave
me comfort. Rather, it gave me what I wanted. Closeted in that
dark, smelling the earth, away from all humans and all living
human forms, I gave myself over to everything that invaded and
stied my senses. And, in so doing, gave myself over to my grief.
“But that was short.
“When the cold, gray winter sun had set the next night, I was
awake, feeling the tingling numbness leave me soon, as it does in
winter, feeling the dark, living things that inhabited the con
scurrying around me, eeing my resurrection. I emerged slowly
under the faint moon, savoring the coldness, the utter smoothness
of the marble slab I shifted to escape. And, wandering out of the
graves and out of the cemetery, I went over a plan in my mind, a
plan on which I was willing to gamble my life with the powerful
freedom of a being who truly does not care for that life, who has
the extraordinary strength of being willing to die.
“In a kitchen garden I saw something, something that had only
been vague in my thoughts until I had my hands on it. It was a
small scythe, its sharp curved blade still caked with green weeds
from the last mowing. And once I’d wiped it clean and run my
nger along the sharp blade, it was as if my plan came clear to
me and I could move fast to my other errands: the getting of a
carriage and a driver who could do my bidding for days—dazzled
by the cash I gave him and the promises of more; the removing of
my chest from the Hôtel Saint-Gabriel to the inside of that
carriage; and the procuring of all the other things which I needed.
And then there were the long hours of the night, when I could
pretend to drink with my driver and talk with him and obtain his
expensive cooperation in driving me at dawn from Paris to
Fontainebleau. I slept within the carriage, where my delicate
health required I not be disturbed under any circumstances—this
privacy being so important that I was more than willing to add a
generous sum to the amount I was already paying him simply for
his not touching even the door handle of the carriage until I
emerged from it.
“And when I was convinced he was in agreement and quite
drunk enough to be oblivious to almost everything but the
gathering up of the reins for the journey to Fountainebleau, we
drove slowly, cautiously, into the street of the Théâtre des
Vampires and waited some distance away for the sky to begin to
grow light.
“The theater was shut up and locked against the coming day. I
crept towards it when the air and the light told me I had at most
fteen minutes to execute my plan. I knew that, closeted far
within, the vampires of the theater were in their cons already.
And that even if one late vampire lingered on the verge of going
to bed, he would not hear these rst preparations. Quickly I put
pieces of wood against the bolted doors. Quickly I drove in the
nails, which then locked these doors from the outside. A passer-by
took some note of what I did but went on, believing me perhaps
to be boarding up the establishment with the authority of the
owner. I didn’t know. I did know, however, that before I was
nished I might encounter those ticket-sellers, those ushers, those
men who swept up after, and might well remain inside to guard
the vampires in their daily sleep.
“It was of those men I was thinking as I led the carriage up to
Armand’s alley and left it there, taking with me two small barrels
of kerosene to Armand’s door.
“The key admitted me easily as I’d hoped, and once inside the
lower passage, I opened the door of his cell to nd he was not
there. The con was gone. In fact, everything was gone but the
furnishings, including the dead boy’s enclosed bed. Hastily I
opened one barrel and, rolling the other before me towards the
stairs, I hurried along, splashing the exposed beams with kerosene
and inging it on the wooden doors of the other cells. The smell
of it was strong, stronger and more powerful than any sound I
might have made to alert anyone. And, though I stood stark still
at the stairs with the barrels and the scythe, listening, I heard
nothing, nothing of those guards I presumed to be there, nothing
of the vampires themselves. And clutching the handle of the
scythe I ventured slowly upwards until I stood in the door of the
ballroom. No one was there to see me splash the kerosene on the
horsehair chairs or on the draperies, or to see me hesitate just for
an instant at that doorway of the small yard where Madeleine and
Claudia had been killed. Oh, how I wanted to open that door. It so
tempted me that for a minute I almost forgot my plan. I almost
dropped the barrels and turned the knob. But I could see the light
through the cracks of the old wood of the door. And I knew I had
to go on. Madeleine and Claudia were not there. They were dead.
And what would I have done had I opened that doorway, had I
been confronted again with those remains, that matted,
dishevelled golden hair? There was no time, no purpose. I was
running through dark corridors I hadn’t explored before, bathing
old wooden doors with the kerosene, certain that the vampires lay
closeted within, rushing on cat feet into the theater itself, where a
cold, gray light, seeping from the bolted front entrance, sped me
on to ing a dark stain across the great velvet stage curtain, the
padded chairs, the draperies of the lobby doors.
“And nally the barrel was empty and thrown away, and I was
pulling out the crude torch I’d made, putting my match to its
kerosene-drenched rags, and setting the chairs alight, the ames
licking their thick silk and padding as I ran towards the stage and
sent the re rushing up that dark curtain into a cold, sucking
draft.
“In seconds the theater blazed as with the light of day, and the
whole frame of it seemed to creak and groan as the re roared up
the walls, licking the great proscenium arch, the plaster curlicues
of the overhanging boxes. But I had no time to admire it, to savor
the smell and the sound of it, the sight of the nooks and crannies
coming to light in the erce illumination that would soon
consume them. I was eeing to the lower oor again, thrusting
the torch into the horsehair couch of the ball-room, into the
curtains, into anything that would burn.
“Someone thundered on the boards above—in rooms I’d never
seen. And then I heard the unmistakable opening of a door. But it
was too late, I told myself, gripping both the scythe and the torch.
The building was alight. They would be destroyed. I ran for the
stairs, a distant cry rising over the crackling and roaring of the
ames, my torch scraping the kerosene-soaked rafters above me,
the ames enveloping the old wood, curling against the damp
ceiling. It was Santiago’s cry, I was sure of it; and then, as I hit the
lower oor, I saw him above, behind me, coming down the stairs,
the smoke lling the stairwell around him, his eyes watering, his
throat thickened with his choking, his hand out towards me as he
stammered, ‘You…you…damn you!’ And I froze, narrowing my
eyes against the smoke, feeling the water rising in them, burning
in them, but never letting go of his image for an instant, the
vampire using all his power now to y at me with such speed that
he would become invisible. And as the dark thing that was his
clothes rushed down, I swung the scythe and saw it strike his neck
and felt the weight of his neck and saw him fall sideways, both
hands reaching for the appalling wound. The air was full of cries,
of screams, and a white face loomed above Santiago, a mask of
terror. Some other vampire ran through the passage ahead of me
towards that secret alleyway door. But I stood there poised,
staring at Santiago, seeing him rise despite the wound. And I
swung the scythe again, catching him easily. And there was no
wound. Just two hands groping for a head that was no longer
there.
“And the head, blood coursing from the torn neck, the eyes
staring wild under the aming rafters, the dark silky hair matted
and wet with blood, fell at my feet. I struck it hard with my boot,
I sent it ying along the passage. And I ran after it, the torch and
the scythe thrown aside as my arms went up to protect me from
the blaze of white light that ooded the stairs to the alley.
“The rain descended in shimmering needles into my eyes, eyes
that squinted to see the dark outline of the carriage icker against
the sky. The slumped driver straightened at my hoarse command,
his clumsy hand going instinctively for the whip, and the carriage
lurched as I pulled open the door, the horses driving forward fast
as I grappled with the lid of the chest, my body thrown roughly to
one side, my burnt hands slipping down into the cold protecting
silk, the lid coming down into concealing darkness.
“The pace of the horses increased driving away from the corner
of the burning building. Yet I could still smell the smoke; it
choked me; it burnt my eyes and my lungs, even as my hands
were burnt and my forehead was burnt from the rst diused
light of the sun.
“But we were driving on, away from the smoke and the cries.
We were leaving Paris. I had done it. The Théâtre des Vampires
was burning to the ground.
“And as I felt my head fall back, I saw Claudia and Madeleine
again in one another’s arms in that grim yard, and I said to them
softly, bending down to the soft heads of hair that glistened in the
candlelight, ‘I couldn’t take you away. I couldn’t take you. But
they will lie ruined and dead all around you. If the re doesn’t
consume them, it will be the sun. If they are not burnt out, then it
will be the people who will come to ght the re who will nd
them and expose them to the light of day. But I promise you, they
will all die as you have died, everyone who was closeted there
this dawn will die. And they are the only deaths I have caused in
my long life which are both exquisite and good.’ ”
TWO NIGHTS LATER I returned. I had to see that rain-ooded cellar
where every brick was scorched, crumbling, where a few skeletal
rafters jabbed at the sky like stakes. Those monstrous murals that
once enclosed the ballroom were blasted fragments in the rubble,
a painted face here, a patch of angel’s wing there, the only
identiable things that remained.
“With the evening newspapers, I pushed my way to the back of
a crowded little theater cafe across the street; and there, under
the cover of the dim gas lamps and thick cigar smoke, I read the
accounts of the holocaust. Few bodies were found in the burnt-out
theater, but clothing and costumes had been scattered
everywhere, as though the famous vampire mummers had in fact
vacated the theater in haste long before the re. In other words,
only the younger vampires had left their bones; the ancient ones
had suered total obliteration. No mention of an eye-witness or a
surviving victim. How could there have been?
“Yet something bothered me considerably. I did not fear any
vampires who had escaped. I had no desire to hunt them out if
they had. That most of the crew had died I was certain. But why
had there been no human guards? I was certain Santiago had
mentioned guards, and I’d supposed them to be the ushers and
doormen who staed the theater before the performance. And I
had even been prepared to encounter them with my scythe. But
they had not been there. It was strange. And my mind was not
entirely comfortable with the strangeness.
“But, nally, when I put the papers aside and sat thinking these
things over, the strangeness of it didn’t matter. What mattered
was that I was more utterly alone in the world than I had ever
been in all my life. That Claudia was gone beyond reprieve. And I
had less reason to live than I’d ever had, and less desire.
“And yet my sorrow did not overwhelm me, did not actually
visit me, did not make of me the wracked and desperate creature I
might have expected to become. Perhaps it was not possible to
sustain the torment I’d experienced when I saw Claudia’s burnt
remains. Perhaps it was not possible to know that and exist over
any period of time. I wondered vaguely, as the hours passed, as
the smoke of the cafe grew thicker and the faded curtain of the
little lamplit stage rose and fell, and robust women sang there, the
light glittering on their paste jewels, their rich, soft voices often
plaintive, exquisitely sad—I wondered vaguely what it would be
to feel this loss, this outrage, and be justied in it, be deserving of
sympathy, of solace. I would not have told my woe to a living
creature. My own tears meant nothing to me.
“Where to go then, if not to die? It was strange how the answer
came to me. Strange how I wandered out of the cafe then, circling
the ruined theater, wandering nally towards the broad Avenue
Napoléon and following it towards the palace of the Louvre. It
was as if that place called to me, and yet I had never been inside
its walls. I’d passed its long façade a thousand times, wishing that
I could live as a mortal man for one day to move through those
many rooms and see those many magnicent paintings. I was bent
on it now, possessed only of some vague notion that in works of
art I could nd some solace while bringing nothing of death to
what was inanimate and yet magnicently possessed of the spirit
of life itself.
“Somewhere along the Avenue Napoleon, I heard the step
behind me which I knew to be Armand’s. He was signalling,
letting me know that he was near. Yet I did nothing other than
slow my pace and let him fall into step with me, and for a long
while we walked, saying nothing. I dared not look at him. Of
course, I’d been thinking of him all the while, and how if we were
men and Claudia had been my love I might have fallen helpless in
his arms nally, the need to share some common grief so strong,
so consuming. The dam threatened to break now; and yet it did
not break. I was numbed and I walked as one numbed.
“ ‘You know what I’ve done,’ I said nally. We had turned o
the avenue and I could see ahead of me the long row of double
columns on the façade of the Royal Museum. ‘You removed your
con as I warned you.…’
“ ‘Yes,’ he answered. There was a sudden, unmistakable comfort
in the sound of his voice. It weakened me. But I was simply too
remote from pain, too tired.
“ ‘And yet you are here with me now. Do you mean to avenge
them?’
“ ‘No,’ he said.
“ ‘They were your fellows, you were their leader,’ I said. ‘Yet
you didn’t warn them I was out for them, as I warned you?’
“ ‘No,’ he said.
“ ‘But surely you despise me for it. Surely you respect some
rule, some allegiance to your own kind.’
“ ‘No,’ he said softly.
“It was amazing to me how logical his response was, even
though I couldn’t explain it or understand it.
“And something came clear to me out of the remote regions of
my own relentless considerations. ‘There were guards; there were
those ushers who slept in the theater. Why weren’t they there
when I entered? Why weren’t they there to protect the sleeping
vampires?’
“ ‘Because they were in my employ and I discharged them. I
sent them away,’ Armand said.
“I stopped. He showed no concern at my facing him, and as
soon as our eyes met I wished the world were not one black
empty ruin of ashes and death. I wished it were fresh and
beautiful, and that we were both living and had love to give each
other. ‘You did this, knowing what I planned to do?’
“ ‘Yes,’ he said.
“ ‘But you were their leader! They trusted you. They believed in
you. They lived with you!’ I said. ‘I don’t understand you…
why…?’
“ ‘Think of any answer you like,’ he said calmly and sensitively,
as if he didn’t wish to bruise me with any accusation or disdain,
but wanted me merely to consider this literally. ‘I can think of
many. Think of the one you need and believe it. It’s as likely as
any other. I shall give you the real reason for what I did, which is
the least true: I was leaving Paris. The theater belonged to me. So
I discharged them.’
“ ‘But with what you knew…’
“ ‘I told you, it was the actual reason and it was the least true,’
he said patiently.
“ ‘Would you destroy me as easily as you let them be
destroyed?’ I demanded.
“ ‘Why should I?’ he asked.
“ ‘My God,’ I whispered.
“ ‘You’re much changed,’ he said. ‘But in a way, you are much
the same.’
“I walked on for a while and then, before the entrance to the
Louvre, I stopped. At rst it seemed to me that its many windows
were dark and silver with the moonlight and the thin rain. But
then I thought I saw a faint light moving within, as though a
guard walked among the treasures. I envied him completely. And
I xed my thoughts on him obdurately, that guard, calculating
how a vampire might get to him, how take his life and his lantern
and his keys. The plan was confusion. I was incapable of plans. I
had made only one real plan in my life, and it was nished.
“And then nally I surrendered. I turned to Armand again and
let my eyes penetrate his eyes, and let him draw close to me as if
he meant to make me his victim, and I bowed my head and felt
his rm arm around my shoulder. And, remembering suddenly
and keenly Claudia’s words, what were very nearly her last words
—that admission that she knew that I could love Armand because
I had been able to love even her—those words struck me as rich
and ironical, more lled with meaning than she could have
guessed.
“ ‘Yes,’ I said softly to him, ‘that is the crowning evil, that we
can even go so far as to love each other, you and I. And who else
would show us a particle of love, a particle of compassion or
mercy? Who else, knowing us as we know each other, could do
anything but destroy us? Yet we can love each other.’
“And for a long moment, he stood there looking at me, drawing
nearer, his head gradually inclining to one side, his lips parted as
if he meant to speak. But then he only smiled and shook his head
gently to confess he didn’t understand.
“But I wasn’t thinking of him anymore. I had one of those rare
moments when it seemed I thought of nothing. My mind had no
shape. I saw that the rain had stopped. I saw that the air was clear
and cold. That the street was luminous. And I wanted to enter the
Louvre. I formed words to tell Armand this, to ask him if he might
help me do what was necessary to have the Louvre till dawn.
“He thought it a very simple request. He said only he wondered
why I had waited so long.”
WE LEFT PARIS very soon after that. I told Armand that I wanted to
return to the Mediterranean—not to Greece, as I had so long
dreamed. I wanted to go to Egypt. I wanted to see the desert there
and, more importantly, I wanted to see the pyramids and the
graves of the kings. I wanted to make contact with those grave-
thieves who know more of the graves than do scholars, and I
wanted to go down into the graves yet unopened and see the
kings as they were buried, see those furnishings and works of art
stored with them, and the paintings on their walls. Armand was
more than willing. And we took leave of Paris early one evening
by carriage without the slightest hint of ceremony.
“I had done one thing which I should note. I had gone back to
my rooms in the Hôtel Saint-Gabriel. It was my purpose to take up
some things of Claudia and Madeleine and put them into cons
and have graves prepared for them in the cemetery of
Montmartre. I did not do this. I stayed a short while in the rooms,
where all was neat and put right by the sta, so that it seemed
Madeleine and Claudia might return at any time. Madeleine’s
embroidery ring lay with her bundles of thread on a chair-side
table. I looked at that and at everything else, and my task seemed
meaningless. So I left.
“But something had occurred to me there; or, rather, something
I had already been aware of merely became clearer. I had gone to
the Louvre that night to lay down my soul, to nd some
transcendent pleasure that would obliterate pain and make me
utterly forget even myself. I’d been upheld in this. As I stood on
the sidewalk before the doors of the hotel waiting for the carriage
that would take me to meet Armand, I saw the people who
walked there—the restless boulevard crowd of well-dressed ladies
and gentlemen, the hawkers of papers, the carriers of luggage, the
drivers of carriages—all these in a new light. Before, all art had
held for me the promise of a deeper understanding of the human
heart. Now the human heart meant nothing. I did not denigrate it.
I simply forgot it. The magnicent paintings of the Louvre were
not for me intimately connected with the hands that had painted
them. They were cut loose and dead like children turned to stone.
Like Claudia, severed from her mother, preserved for decades in
pearl and hammered gold. Like Madeleine’s dolls. And of course,
like Claudia and Madeleine and myself, they could all be reduced
to ashes.”
PART IV
AND THAT IS THE END of the story, really.
“Of course, I know you wonder what happened to us
afterwards. What became of Armand? Where did I go? What did I
do? But I tell you nothing really happened. Nothing that wasn’t
merely inevitable. And my journey through the Louvre that last
night I’ve described to you, that was merely prophetic.
“I never changed after that. I sought for nothing in the one
great source of change which is humanity. And even in my love
and absorption with the beauty of the world, I sought to learn
nothing that could be given back to humanity. I drank of the
beauty of the world as a vampire drinks. I was satised. I was
lled to the brim. But I was dead. And I was changeless. The story
ended in Paris, as I’ve said.
“For a long time I thought that Claudia’s death had been the
cause of the end of things. That if I had seen Madeleine and
Claudia leave Paris safely, things might have been dierent with
me and Armand. I might have loved again and desired again, and
sought some semblance of mortal life which would have been rich
and varied, though unnatural. But now I have come to see that
was false. Even if Claudia had not died, even if I had not despised
Armand for letting her die, it would have all turned out the same.
Coming slowly to know his evil, or being catapulted into it…it
was all the same. I wanted none of it nally. And, deserving
nothing better, I closed up like a spider in the ame of a match.
And even Armand who was my constant companion, and my only
companion, existed at a great distance from me, beyond that veil
which separated me from all living things, a veil which was a
form of shroud.
“But I know you are eager to hear what became of Armand.
And the night is almost ended. I want to tell you this because it is
very important. The story is incomplete without it.
“We travelled the world after we left Paris, as I’ve told you; rst
Egypt, then Greece, then Italy, Asia Minor—wherever I chose to
lead us, really, and wherever my pursuit of art led me. Time
ceased to exist on any meaningful basis during these years, and I
was often absorbed in very simple things—a painting in a
museum, a cathedral window, one single beautiful statue—for
long periods of time.
“But all during these years I had a vague but persistent desire to
return to New Orleans. I never forgot New Orleans. And when we
were in tropical places and places of those owers and trees that
grow in Louisiana, I would think of it acutely and I would feel for
my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for anything outside my
endless pursuit of art. And, from time to time, Armand would ask
me to take him there. And I, being aware in a gentlemanly
manner that I did little to please him and often went for long
periods without really speaking to him or seeking him out,
wanted to do this because he asked me. It seemed his asking
caused me to forget some vague fear that I might feel pain in New
Orleans, that I might experience again the pale shadow of my
former unhappiness and longing. But I put it o. Perhaps the fear
was stronger than I knew. We came to America and lived in New
York for a long time. I continued to put it o. Then, nally,
Armand urged me in another way. He told me something he’d
concealed from me since the time we were in Paris.
“Lestat had not died in the Théâtre des Vampires. I had
believed him to be dead, and when I asked Armand about those
vampires, he told me they all had perished. But he told me now
that this wasn’t so. Lestat had left the theater the night I had run
away from Armand and sought out the cemetery in Montmartre.
Two vampires who had been made with Lestat by the same
master had assisted him in booking passage to New Orleans.
“I cannot convey to you the feeling that came over me when I
heard this. Of course, Armand told me he had protected me from
this knowledge, hoping that I would not undertake a long journey
merely for revenge, a journey that would have caused me pain
and grief at the time. But I didn’t really care. I hadn’t thought of
Lestat at all the night I’d torched the theater. I’d thought of
Santiago and Celeste and the others who had destroyed Claudia.
Lestat, in fact, had aroused in me feelings which I hadn’t wished
to conde in anyone, feelings I’d wished to forget, despite
Claudia’s death. Hatred had not been one of them.
“But when I heard this now from Armand it was as if the veil
that protected me were thin and transparent, and though it still
hung between me and the world of feeling, I perceived through it
Lestat, and that I wanted to see him again. And with that spurring
me on, we returned to New Orleans.
“It was late spring of this year. And as soon as I emerged from
the railway station, I knew that I had indeed come home. It was
as if the very air were perfumed and peculiar there, and I felt an
extraordinary ease walking on those warm, at pavements, under
those familiar oaks, and listening to the ceaseless vibrant living
sounds of the night.
“Of course, New Orleans was changed. But far from lamenting
those changes, I was grateful for what seemed still the same. I
could nd in the uptown Garden District, which had been in my
time the Faubourg Ste.-Marie, one of the stately old mansions that
dated back to those times, so removed from the quiet brick street
that, walking out in the moonlight under its magnolia trees, I
knew the same sweetness and peace I’d known in the old days;
not only in the dark, narrow streets of the Vieux Carré but in the
wilderness of Pointe du Lac. There were the honeysuckle and the
roses, and the glimpse of Corinthian columns against the stars;
and outside the gate were dreamy streets, other mansions…it was
a citadel of grace.
“In the Rue Royale, where I took Armand past tourists and
antique shops and the bright-lit entrances of fashionable
restaurants, I was astonished to discover the town house where
Lestat and Claudia and I had made our home, the façade little
changed by fresh plaster and whatever repairs had been done
within. Its two French windows still opened onto the small
balconies over the shop below, and I could see in the soft
brilliance of the electric chandeliers an elegant wallpaper that
would not have been unfamiliar in those days before the war. I
had a strong sense of Lestat there, more of a sense of him than of
Claudia, and I felt certain, though he was nowhere near this town
house, that I’d nd him in New Orleans.
“And I felt something else; it was a sadness that came over me
then, after Armand had gone on his way. But this sadness was not
painful, nor was it passionate. It was something rich, however,
and almost sweet, like the fragrance of the jasmine and the roses
that crowded the old courtyard garden which I saw through the
iron gates. And this sadness gave a subtle satisfaction and held me
a long time in that spot; and it held me to the city; and it didn’t
really leave me that night when I went away.
“I wonder now what might have come of this sadness, what it
might have engendered in me that could have become stronger
than itself. But I jump ahead of my story.
“Because shortly after that I saw a vampire in New Orleans, a
sleek white-faced young man walking alone on the broad
sidewalks of St. Charles Avenue in the early hours before dawn.
And I was at once convinced that if Lestat still lived here that
vampire might know him and might even lead me to him. Of
course, the vampire didn’t see me. I had long ago learned to spot
my own kind in large cities without their having a chance to see
me. Armand, in his brief visits with vampires in London and
Rome, had learned that the burning of the Théâtre des Vampires
was known throughout the world, and that both of us were
considered outcasts. Battles over this meant nothing to me, and I
have avoided them to this day. But I began to watch for this
vampire in New Orleans and to follow him, though often he led
me merely to theaters or other pastimes in which I had no
interest. But one night, nally, things changed.
“It was a very warm evening, and I could tell as soon as I saw
him on St. Charles that he had someplace to go. He was not only
walking fast, but he seemed a little distressed. And when he
turned o St. Charles nally on a narrow street which became at
once shabby and dark, I felt sure he was headed for something
that would interest me.
“But then he entered one side of a small wooden duplex and
brought death to a woman there. This he did very fast, without a
trace of pleasure; and after he was nished, he gathered her child
up from the bassinet, wrapped it gently in a blue wool blanket,
and came out again into the street.
“Only a block or two after that, he stopped before a vine-
covered iron fence that enclosed a large overgrown yard. I could
see an old house beyond the trees, dark, the paint peeling, the
ornate iron railings of its long upper and lower galleries caked
with orange rust. It seemed a doomed house, stranded here
among the numerous small wooden houses, its high empty
windows looking out on what must have been a dismal clutter of
low roofs, a corner grocery, and a small adjacent bar. But the
broad, dark grounds protected the house somewhat from these
things, and I had to move along the fence quite a few feet before I
nally spotted a faint glimmer in one of the lower windows
through the thick branches of the trees. The vampire had gone
through the gate. I could hear the baby wailing, and then nothing.
And I followed, easily mounting the old fence and dropping down
into the garden and coming up quietly onto the long front porch.
“It was an amazing sight I saw when I crept up to one of the
long, oor-length windows. For despite the heat of this breezeless
evening when the gallery, even with its warped and broken
boards, might have been the only tolerable place for human or
vampire, a re blazed in the grate of the parlor and all its
windows were shut, and the young vampire sat by that re
talking to another vampire who hovered very near it, his
slippered feet right up against the hot grate, his trembling ngers
pulling over and over at the lapels of his shabby blue robe. And,
though a frayed electric cord dangled from a plaster wreath of
roses in the ceiling, only an oil lamp added its dim light to the
re, an oil lamp which stood by the wailing child on a nearby
table.
“My eyes widened as I studied this stooped and shivering
vampire whose rich blond hair hung down in loose waves
covering his face. I longed to wipe away the dust on the window
glass which would not let me be certain of what I suspected. ‘You
all leave me!’ he whined now in a thin, high-pitched voice.
“ ‘You can’t keep us with you!’ said the sti young vampire
sharply. He sat with his legs crossed, his arms folded on his
narrow chest, his eyes looking around the dusty, empty room
disdainfully. ‘Oh, hush!’ he said to the baby, who let out a sharp
cry. ‘Stop it, stop it.’
“ ‘The wood, the wood,’ said the blond vampire feebly, and, as
he motioned to the other to hand him the fuel by his chair, I saw
clearly, unmistakably, the prole of Lestat, that smooth skin now
devoid of even the faintest trace of his old scars.
“ ‘If you’d just go out,’ said the other angrily, heaving the chunk
of wood into the blaze. ‘If you’d just hunt something other than
these miserable animals.…’ And he looked about himself in
disgust. I saw then, in the shadows, the small furry bodies of
several cats, lying helter-skelter in the dust. A most remarkable
thing, because a vampire can no more endure to be near his dead
victims than any mammal can remain near any place where he
has left his waste. ‘Do you know that it’s summer?’ demanded the
young one. Lestat merely rubbed his hands. The baby’s howling
died o, yet the young vampire added, ‘Get on with it, take it so
you’ll be warm.’
“ ‘You might have brought me something else!’ said Lestat
bitterly. And, as he looked at the baby, I saw his eyes squinting
against the dull light of the smoky lamp. I felt a shock of
recognition at those eyes, even at the expression beneath the
shadow of the deep wave of his yellow hair. And yet to hear that
whining voice, to see that bent and quivering back! Almost
without thinking I rapped hard on the glass. The young vampire
was up at once aecting a hard, vicious expression; but I merely
motioned for him to turn the latch. And Lestat, clutching his
bathrobe to his throat, rose from the chair.
“ ‘It’s Louis! Louis!’ he said. ‘Let him in.’ And he gestured
frantically, like an invalid, for the young ‘nurse’ to obey.
“As soon as the window opened I breathed the stench of the
room and its sweltering heat. The swarming of the insects on the
rotted animals scratched at my senses so that I recoiled despite
myself, despite Lestat’s desperate pleas for me to come to him.
There, in the far corner, was the con where he slept, the lacquer
peeling from the wood, half covered with piles of yellow
newspapers. And bones lay in the corners, picked clean except for
bits and tufts of fur. But Lestat had his dry hands on mine now,
drawing me towards him and towards the warmth, and I could
see the tears welling in his eyes; and only when his mouth was
stretched in a strange smile of desperate happiness that was near
to pain did I see the faint traces of the old scars. How baing and
awful it was, this smooth-faced, shimmering immortal man bent
and rattled and whining like a crone.
“ ‘Yes, Lestat,’ I said softly. ‘I’ve come to see you.’ I pushed his
hand gently, slowly away and moved towards the baby, who was
crying desperately now from fear as well as hunger. As soon as I
lifted it up and loosened the covers, it quieted a little, and then I
patted it and rocked it. Lestat was whispering to me now in quick,
half-articulated words I couldn’t understand, the tears streaming
down his cheeks, the young vampire at the open window with a
look of disgust on his face and one hand on the window latch, as
if he meant at any minute to bolt.
“ ‘So you’re Louis,’ said the young vampire. This seemed to
increase Lestat’s inexpressible excitement, and he wiped
frantically at his tears with the hem of his robe.
“A y lit on the baby’s forehead, and involuntarily I gasped as I
pressed it between two ngers and dropped it dead to the oor.
The child was no longer crying. It was looking up at me with
extraordinary blue eyes, dark-blue eyes, its round face glistening
from the heat, and a smile played on its lips, a smile that grew
brighter like a ame. I had never brought death to anything so
young, so innocent, and I was aware of this now as I held the
child with an odd feeling of sorrow, stronger even than that
feeling which had come over me in the Rue Royale. And, rocking
the child gently, I pulled the young vampire’s chair to the re and
sat down.
“ ‘Don’t try to speak…it’s all right,’ I said to Lestat, who
dropped down gratefully into his chair and reached out to stroke
the lapels of my coat with both hands.
“ ‘But I’m so glad to see you,’ he stammered through his tears.
‘I’ve dreamed of your coming…coming…’ he said. And then he
grimaced, as if he were feeling a pain he couldn’t identify, and
again the ne map of scars appeared for an instant. He was
looking o, his hand up to his ear, as if he meant to cover it to
defend himself from some terrible sound. ‘I didn’t…’ he started;
and then he shook his head, his eyes clouding as he opened them
wide, strained to focus them. ‘I didn’t mean to let them do it,
Louis…I mean that Santiago…that one, you know, he didn’t tell
me what they planned to do.’
“ ‘That’s all past, Lestat,’ I said.
“ ‘Yes, yes,’ he nodded vigorously. ‘Past. She should never…
why, Louis, you know.…’ And he was shaking his head, his voice
seeming to gain in strength, to gain a little in resonance with his
eort. ‘She should have never been one of us, Louis.’ And he
rapped his sunken chest with his st as he said ‘Us’ again softly.
“She. It seemed then that she had never existed. That she had
been some illogical, fantastical dream that was too precious and
too personal for me ever to conde in anyone. And too long gone.
I looked at him. I stared at him. And tried to think, Yes, the three
of us together.
“ ‘Don’t fear me, Lestat,’ I said, as though talking to myself. ‘I
bring you no harm.’
“ ‘You’ve come back to me, Louis,’ he whispered in that thin,
high-pitched voice. ‘You’ve come home again to me, Louis,
haven’t you?’ And again he bit his lip and looked at me
desperately.
“ ‘No, Lestat.’ I shook my head. He was frantic for a moment,
and again he commenced one gesture and then another and
nally sat there with his hands over his face in a paroxysm of
distress. The other vampire, who was studying me coldly, asked:
“ ‘Are you…have you come back to him?’
“ ‘No, of course not,’ I answered. And he smirked, as if this was
as he expected, that everything fell to him again, and he walked
out onto the porch. I could hear him there very near, waiting.
“ ‘I only wanted to see you, Lestat,’ I said. But Lestat didn’t
seem to hear me. Something else had distracted him. And he was
gazing o, his eyes wide, his hands hovering near his ears. Then I
heard it also. It was a siren. And as it grew louder, his eyes shut
tight against it and his ngers covered his ears. And it grew
louder and louder, coming up the street from downtown. ‘Lestat!’
I said to him, over the baby’s cries, which rose now in the same
terrible fear of the siren. But his agony obliterated me. His lips
were drawn back from his teeth in a terrible grimace of pain.
‘Lestat, it’s only a siren!’ I said to him stupidly. And then he came
forward out of the chair and took hold of me and held tight to me,
and, despite myself, I took his hand. He bent down, pressing his
head against my chest and holding my hand so tight that he
caused me pain. The room was lled with the ashing red light of
the siren, and then it was going away.
“ ‘Louis, I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it,’ he growled through his
tears. ‘Help me, Louis, stay with me.’
“ ‘But why are you afraid?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you know what these
things are?’ And as I looked down at him, as I saw his yellow hair
pressed against my coat, I had a vision of him from long ago, that
tall, stately gentleman in the swirling black cape, with his head
thrown back, his rich, awless voice singing the lilting air of the
opera from which we’d only just come, his walking stick tapping
the cobblestones in time with the music, his large, sparkling eye
catching the young woman who stood by, enrapt, so that a smile
spread over his face as the song died on his lips; and for one
moment, that one moment when his eye met hers, all evil seemed
obliterated in that ush of pleasure, that passion for merely being
alive.
“Was this the price of that involvement? A sensibility shocked
by change, shrivelling from fear? I thought quietly of all the
things I might say to him, how I might remind him that he was
immortal, that nothing condemned him to this retreat save
himself, and that he was surrounded with the unmistakable signs
of inevitable death. But I did not say these things, and I knew that
I would not.
“It seemed the silence of the room rushed back around us, like a
dark sea that the siren had driven away. The ies swarmed on the
festering body of a rat, and the child looked quietly up at me as
though my eyes were bright baubles, and its dimpled hand closed
on the nger that I poised above its tiny petal mouth.
“Lestat had risen, straightened, but only to bend over and slink
into the chair. ‘You won’t stay with me,’ he sighed. But then he
looked away and seemed suddenly absorbed.
“ ‘I wanted to talk to you so much,’ he said. ‘That night I came
home to the Rue Royale I only wanted to talk to you!’ He
shuddered violently, eyes closed, his throat seeming to contract. It
was as if the blows I’d struck him then were falling now. He
stared blindly ahead, his tongue moistening his lip, his voice low,
almost natural. ‘I went to Paris after you…’
“ ‘What was it you wanted to tell me?’ I asked. ‘What was it you
wanted to talk about?’
“I could well remember his mad insistence in the Théâtre des
Vampires. I hadn’t thought of it in years. No, I had never thought
of it. And I was aware that I spoke of it now with great
reluctance.
“But he only smiled at me, an insipid, near apologetic smile.
And shook his head. I watched his eyes ll with a soft, bleary
despair.
“I felt a profound, undeniable relief.
“ ‘But you will stay!’ he insisted.
“ ‘No,’ I answered.
“ ‘And neither will I!’ said that young vampire from the
darkness outside. And he stood for a second in the open window
looking at us. Lestat looked up at him and then sheepishly away,
and his lower lip seemed to thicken and tremble. ‘Close it, close
it,’ he said, waving his nger at the window. Then a sob burst
from him and, covering his mouth with his hand, he put his head
down and cried.
“The young vampire was gone. I heard his steps moving fast on
the walk, heard the heavy chink of the iron gate. And I was alone
with Lestat, and he was crying. It seemed a long time before he
stopped, and during all that time I merely watched him. I was
thinking of all the things that had passed between us. I was
remembering things which I supposed I had completely forgotten.
And I was conscious then of that same overwhelming sadness
which I’d felt when I saw the place in the Rue Royale where we
had lived. Only, it didn’t seem to me to be a sadness for Lestat, for
that smart, gay vampire who used to live there then. It seemed a
sadness for something else, something beyond Lestat that only
included him and was part of the great awful sadness of all the
things I’d ever lost or loved or known. It seemed then I was in a
dierent place, a dierent time. And this dierent place and time
was very real, and it was a room where the insects had hummed
as they were humming here and the air had been close and thick
with death and with the spring perfume. And I was on the verge
of knowing that place and knowing with it a terrible pain, a pain
so terrible that my mind veered away from it, said, No, don’t take
me back to that place—and suddenly it was receding, and I was
with Lestat here now. Astonished, I saw my own tear fall onto the
face of the child. I saw it glisten on the child’s cheek, and I saw
the cheek become very plump with the child’s smile. It must have
been seeing the light in the tears. I put my hand to my face and
wiped at the tears that were in fact there and looked at them in
amazement.
“ ‘But Louis…’ Lestat was saying softly. ‘How can you be as you
are, how can you stand it?’ He was looking up at me, his mouth in
that same grimace, his face wet with tears. ‘Tell me, Louis, help
me to understand! How can you understand it all, how can you
endure?’ And I could see by the desperation in his eyes and the
deeper tone which his voice had taken that he, too, was pushing
himself towards something that for him was very painful, towards
a place where he hadn’t ventured in a long time. But then, even as
I looked at him, his eyes appeared to become misty, confused.
And he pulled the robe up tight, and shaking his head, he looked
at the re. A shudder passed through him and he moaned.
“ ‘I have to go now, Lestat,’ I said to him. I felt weary, weary of
him and weary of this sadness. And I longed again for the stillness
outside, that perfect quiet to which I’d become so completely
accustomed. But I realized, as I rose to my feet, that I was taking
the little baby with me.
“Lestat looked up at me now with his large, agonized eyes and
his smooth, ageless face. ‘But you’ll come back…you’ll come to
visit me…Louis?’ he said.
“I turned away from him, hearing him calling after me, and
quietly left the house. When I reached the street, I looked back
and I could see him hovering at the window as if he were afraid
to go out. I realized he had not gone out for a long, long time, and
it occurred to me then that perhaps he would never go out again.
“I returned to the small house from which the vampire had
taken the child, and left it there in its crib.”
“Not very long after that I told Armand I’d seen Lestat. Perhaps it
was a month, I’m not certain. Time meant little to me then, as it
means little to me now. But it meant a great deal to Armand. He
was amazed that I hadn’t mentioned this before.
“We were walking that night uptown where the city gives way
to the Audubon Park and the levee is a deserted, grassy slope that
descends to a muddy beach heaped here and there with
driftwood, going out to the lapping waves of the river. On the far
bank were the very dim lights of industries and riverfront
companies, pinpoints of green or red that ickered in the distance
like stars. And the moon showed the broad, strong current moving
fast between the two shores; and even the summer heat was gone
here, with the cool breeze coming o the water and gently lifting
the moss that hung from the twisted oak where we sat. I was
picking at the grass, and tasting it, though the taste was bitter and
unnatural. The gesture seemed natural. I was feeling almost that I
might never leave New Orleans. But then, what are such thoughts
when you can live forever? Never leave New Orleans ‘again’?
Again seemed a human word.
“ ‘But didn’t you feel any desire for revenge?’ Armand asked. He
lay on the grass beside me, his weight on his elbow, his eyes xed
on me.
“ ‘Why?’ I asked calmly. I was wishing, as I often wished, that
he was not there, that I was alone. Alone with this powerful and
cool river under the dim moon. ‘He’s met with his own perfect
revenge. He’s dying, dying of rigidity, of fear. His mind cannot
accept this time. Nothing as serene and graceful as that vampire
death you once described to me in Paris. I think he is dying as
clumsily and grotesquely as humans often die in this century…of
old age.’
“ ‘But you…what did you feel?’ he insisted softly. And I was
struck by the personal quality of that question, and how long it
had been since either of us had spoken to the other in that way. I
had a strong sense of him then, the separate being that he was,
the calm and collected creature with the straight auburn hair and
the large, sometimes melancholy eyes, eyes that seemed often to
be seeing nothing but their own thoughts. Tonight they were lit
with a dull re that was unusual.
“ ‘Nothing,’ I answered.
“ ‘Nothing one way or the other?’
“I answered no. I remembered palpably that sorrow. It was as if
the sorrow hadn’t left me suddenly, but had been near me all this
time, hovering, saying, ‘Come.’ But I wouldn’t tell this to Armand,
wouldn’t reveal this. And I had the strangest sensation of feeling
his need for me to tell him this…this, or something…a need
strangely akin to the need for living blood.
“ ‘But did he tell you anything, anything that made you feel the
old hatred…’ he murmured. And it was at this point that I became
keenly aware of how distressed he was.
“ ‘What is it, Armand? Why do you ask this?’ I said.
“But he lay back on the steep levee then, and for a long time he
appeared to be looking at the stars. The stars brought back to me
something far too specic, the ship that had carried Claudia and
me to Europe, and those nights at sea when it seemed the stars
came down to touch the waves.
“ ‘I thought perhaps he would tell you something about Paris…’
Armand said.
“ ‘What should he say about Paris? That he didn’t want Claudia
to die?’ I asked. Claudia again; the name sounded strange. Claudia
spreading out that game of solitaire on the table that shifted with
the shifting of the sea, the lantern creaking on its hook, the black
porthole full of the stars. She had her head bent, her ngers
poised above her ear as if about to loosen strands of her hair. And
I had the most disconcerting sensation: that in my memory she
would look up from that game of solitaire, and the sockets of her
eyes would be empty.
“ ‘You could have told me anything you wanted about Paris,
Armand,’ I said. ‘Long before now. It wouldn’t have mattered.’
“ ‘Even that it was I who…?’
“I turned to him as he lay there looking at the sky. And I saw
the extraordinary pain in his face, in his eyes. It seemed his eyes
were huge, too huge, and the white face that framed them too
gaunt.
“ ‘That it was you who killed her? Who forced her out into that
yard and locked her there?’ I asked. I smiled. ‘Don’t tell me you
have been feeling pain for it all these years, not you.’
“And then he closed his eyes and turned his face away, his hand
resting on his chest as if I’d struck him an awful, sudden blow.
“ ‘You can’t convince me you care about this,’ I said to him
coldly. And I looked out towards the water, and again that feeling
came over me…that I wished to be alone. In a little while I knew I
would get up and go o by myself. That is, if he didn’t leave me
rst. Because I would have liked to remain there actually. It was a
quiet, secluded place.
“ ‘You care about nothing…’ he was saying. And then he sat up
slowly and turned to me so again I could see that dark re in his
eyes. ‘I thought you would at least care about that. I thought you
would feel the old passion, the old anger if you were to see him
again. I thought something would quicken and come alive in you
if you saw him…if you returned to this place.’
“ ‘That I would come back to life?’ I said softly. And I felt the
cold metallic hardness of my words as I spoke, the modulation,
the control. It was as if I were cold all over, made of metal, and
he were fragile suddenly; fragile, as he had been, actually, for a
long time.
“ ‘Yes!’ he cried out. ‘Yes, back to life!’ And then he seemed
puzzled, positively confused. And a strange thing occurred. He
bowed his head at that moment as if he were defeated. And
something in the way that he felt that defeat, something in the
way his smooth white face reected it only for an instant,
reminded me of someone else I’d seen defeated in just that way.
And it was amazing to me that it took me such a long moment to
see Claudia’s face in that attitude; Claudia, as she stood by the
bed in the room at the Hôtel Saint-Gabriel pleading with me to
transform Madeleine into one of us. That same helpless look, that
defeat which seemed to be so heartfelt that everything beyond it
was forgotten. And then he, like Claudia, seemed to rally, to pull
on some reserve of strength. But he said softly to the air, ‘I am
dying!’
“And I, watching him, hearing him, the only creature under
God who heard him, knowing completely that it was true, said
nothing.
“A long sigh escaped his lips. His head was bowed. His right
hand lay limp beside him in the grass. ‘Hatred…that is passion,’
he said. ‘Revenge, that is passion….’
“ ‘Not from me…’ I murmured softly. ‘Not now.’
“And then his eyes xed on me and his face seemed very calm.
‘I used to believe you would get over it—that when the pain of all
of it left you, you would grow warm again and lled with love,
and lled with that wild and insatiable curiosity with which you
rst came to me, that inveterate conscience, and that hunger for
knowledge that brought you all the way to Paris to my cell. I
thought it was a part of you that couldn’t die. And I thought that
when the pain was gone you would forgive me for what part I
played in her death. She never loved you, you know. Not in the
way that I loved you, and the way that you loved us both. I knew
this! I understood it! And I believed I would gather you to me and
hold you. And time would open to us, and we would be the
teachers of one another. All the things that gave you happiness
would give me happiness; and I would be the protector of your
pain. My power would be your power. My strength the same. But
you’re dead inside to me, you’re cold and beyond my reach! It is
as if I’m not here, beside you. And, not being here with you, I
have the dreadful feeling that I don’t exist at all. And you are as
cold and distant from me as those strange modern paintings of
lines and hard forms that I cannot love or comprehend, as alien as
those hard mechanical sculptures of this age which have no
human form. I shudder when I’m near you. I look into your eyes
and my reection isn’t there.…’
“ ‘What you asked was impossible!’ I said quickly. ‘Don’t you
see? What I asked was impossible, too, from the start.’
“He protested, the negation barely forming on his lips, his hand
rising as if to thrust it away.
“ ‘I wanted love and goodness in this which is living death,’ I
said. ‘It was impossible from the beginning, because you cannot
have love and goodness when you do what you know to be evil,
what you know to be wrong. You can only have the desperate
confusion and longing and the chasing of phantom goodness in its
human form. I knew the real answer to my quest before I ever
reached Paris. I knew it when I rst took a human life to feed my
craving. It was my death. And yet I would not accept it, could not
accept it, because like all creatures I don’t wish to die! And so I
sought for other vampires, for God, for the devil, for a hundred
things under a hundred names. And it was all the same, all evil.
And all wrong. Because no one could in any guise convince me of
what I myself knew to be true, that I was damned in my own
mind and soul. And when I came to Paris I thought you were
powerful and beautiful and without regret, and I wanted that
desperately. But you were a destroyer just as I was a destroyer,
more ruthless and cunning even than I. You showed me the only
thing that I could really hope to become, what depth of evil, what
degree of coldness I would have to attain to end my pain. And I
accepted that. And so that passion, that love you saw in me, was
extinguished. And you see now simply a mirror of yourself.’
“A very long time passed before he spoke. He’d risen to his feet,
and he stood with his back to me looking down the river, head
bowed as before, his hands at his sides. I was looking at the river
also. I was thinking quietly, There is nothing more I can say,
nothing more I can do.
“ ‘Louis,’ he said now, lifting his head, his voice very thick and
unlike itself.
“ ‘Yes, Armand,’ I said.
“ ‘Is there anything else you want of me, anything else you
require?’
“ ‘No,’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’
“He didn’t answer this. He began to slowly walk away. I think
at rst I thought he only meant to walk a few paces, perhaps to
wander by himself along the muddy beach below. And by the
time I realized that he was leaving me, he was a mere speck down
there against the occasional ickering in the water under the
moon. I never saw him again.
“Of course, it was several nights later before I realized he was
gone. His con remained. But he did not return to it. And it was
several months before I had that con taken to the St. Louis
cemetery and put into the crypt beside my own. The grave, long
neglected because my family was gone, received the only thing
he’d left behind. But then I began to be uncomfortable with that. I
thought of it on waking, and again at dawn right before I closed
my eyes. And I went downtown one night and took the con out,
and broke it into pieces and left it in the narrow aisle of the
cemetery in the tall grass.
“That vampire who was Lestat’s latest child accosted me one
evening not long after. He begged me to tell him all I knew of the
world, to become his companion and his teacher. I remember
telling him that what I chiey knew was that I’d destroy him if I
ever saw him again. ‘You see, someone must die every night that I
walk, until I’ve the courage to end it,’ I told him. ‘And you’re an
admirable choice for that victim, a killer as evil as myself.’
“And I left New Orleans the next night because the sorrow
wasn’t leaving me. And I didn’t want to think of that old house
where Lestat was dying. Or that sharp, modern vampire who’d
ed me. Or of Armand.
“I wanted to be where there was nothing familiar to me. And
nothing mattered.
“And that’s the end of it. There’s nothing else.”
THE BOY SAT MUTE, staring at the vampire. And the vampire sat
collected, his hands folded on the table, his narrow, red-rimmed
eyes xed on the turning tapes. His face was so gaunt now that
the veins of his temples showed as if carved out of stone. And he
sat so still that only his green eyes evinced life, and that life was a
dull fascination with the turning of the tapes.
Then the boy drew back and ran the ngers of his right hand
loosely through his hair. “No,” he said with a short intake of
breath. Then he said it again louder, “No!”
The vampire didn’t appear to hear him. His eyes moved away
from the tapes towards the window, towards the dark, gray sky.
“It didn’t have to end like that!” said the boy, leaning forward.
The vampire, who continued to look at the sky, uttered a short,
dry laugh.
“All the things you felt in Paris!” said the boy, his voice
increasing in volume. “The love of Claudia, the feeling, even the
feeling for Lestat! It didn’t have to end, not in this, not in despair!
Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? Despair!”
“Stop,” said the vampire abruptly, lifting his right hand. His
eyes shifted almost mechanically to the boy’s face. “I tell you and
I have told you, that it could not have ended any other way.”
“I don’t accept it,” said the boy, and he folded his arms across
his chest, shaking his head emphatically. “I can’t!” And the
emotion seemed to build in him, so that without meaning to, he
scraped his chair back on the bare boards and rose to pace the
oor. But then, when he turned and looked at the vampire’s face
again, the words he was about to speak died in his throat. The
vampire was merely staring at him, and his face had that long
drawn expression of both outrage and bitter amusement.
“Don’t you see how you made it sound? It was an adventure
like I’ll never know in my whole life! You talk about passion, you
talk about longing! You talk about things that millions of us won’t
ever taste or come to understand. And then you tell me it ends
like that. I tell you…” And he stood over the vampire now, his
hands outstretched before him. “If you were to give me that
power! The power to see and feel and live forever!”
The vampire’s eyes slowly began to widen, his lips parting.
“What!” he demanded softly. “What!”
“Give it to me!” said the boy, his right hand tightening in a st,
the st pounding his chest. “Make me a vampire now!” he said as
the vampire stared aghast.
What happened then was swift and confused, but it ended
abruptly with the vampire on his feet holding the boy by the
shoulders, the boy’s moist face contorted with fear, the vampire
glaring at him in rage. “This is what you want?” he whispered, his
pale lips manifesting only the barest trace of movement. “This…
after all I’ve told you…is what you ask for?”
A small cry escaped the boy’s lips, and he began to tremble all
over, the sweat breaking out on his forehead and on the skin
above his upper lip. His hand reached gingerly for the vampire’s
arm. “You don’t know what human life is like!” he said, on the
edge of breaking into tears. “You’ve forgotten. You don’t even
understand the meaning of your own story, what it means to a
human being like me.” And then a choked sob interrupted his
words, and his ngers clung to the vampire’s arm.
“God,” the vampire uttered and, turning away from him, almost
pushed the boy o-balance against the wall. He stood with his
back to the boy, staring at the gray window.
“I beg you…give it all one more chance. One more chance in
me!” said the boy.
The vampire turned to him, his face as twisted with anger as
before. And then, gradually, it began to become smooth. The lids
came down slowly over his eyes and his lips lengthened in a
smile. He looked again at the boy. “I’ve failed,” he sighed, smiling
still. “I have completely failed.…”
“No…” the boy protested.
“Don’t say any more,” said the vampire emphatically. “I have
but one chance left. Do you see the reels? They still turn. I have
but one way to show you the meaning of what I’ve said.” And
then he reached out for the boy so fast that the boy found himself
grasping for something, pushing against something that was not
there, so his hand was outstretched still when the vampire had
him pressed to his chest, the boy’s neck bent beneath his lips. “Do
you see?” whispered the vampire, and the long, silky lips drew up
over his teeth and two long fangs came down into the boy’s esh.
The boy stuttered, a low guttural sound coming out of his throat,
his hand struggling to close on something, his eyes widening only
to become dull and gray as the vampire drank. And the vampire
meantime looked as tranquil as someone in sleep. His narrow
chest heaved so subtly with his sigh that he seemed to be rising
slowly from the oor and then settling again with that same
somnambulistic grace. There was a whine coming from the boy,
and when the vampire let him go he held him out with both
hands and looked at the damp white face, the limp hands, the
eyes half closed.
The boy was moaning, his lower lip loose and trembling as if in
nausea. He moaned again louder, and his head fell back and his
eyes rolled up into his head. The vampire set him down gently in
the chair. The boy was struggling to speak, and the tears which
sprang now to his eyes seemed to come as much from that eort
to speak as from anything else. His head fell forward, heavily,
drunkenly, and his hand rested on the table. The vampire stood
looking down at him, and his white skin became a soft luminous
pink. It was as if a pink light were shining on him and his entire
being seemed to give back that light. The esh of his lips was
dark, almost rose in color, and the veins of his temples and his
hands were mere traces on his skin, and his face was youthful and
smooth.
“Will I…die?” the boy whispered as he looked up slowly, his
mouth wet and slack. “Will I die?” he groaned, his lip trembling.
“I don’t know,” the vampire said, and he smiled.
The boy seemed on the verge of saying something more, but the
hand that rested on the table slid forward on the boards, and his
head lay down beside it as he lost consciousness.
When next he opened his eyes, the boy saw the sun. It lled the
dirty, undressed window and was hot on the side of his face and
his hand. For a moment, he lay there, his face against the table
and then with a great eort, he straightened, took a long deep
breath and closing his eyes, pressed his hand to that place where
the vampire had drawn blood. When his other hand accidentally
touched a band of metal on the top of the tape recorder, he let out
a sudden cry because the metal was hot.
Then he rose, moving clumsily, almost falling, until he rested
both his hands on the white wash basin. Quickly he turned on the
tap, splashed his face with cold water, and wiped it with a soiled
towel that hung there on a nail. He was breathing regularly now
and he stood still, looking into the mirror without any support.
Then he looked at his watch. It was as if the watch shocked him,
brought him more to life than the sun or the water. And he made
a quick search of the room, of the hallway, and, nding nothing
and no one, he settled again into the chair. Then, drawing a small
white pad out of his pocket, and a pen, he set these on the table
and touched the button of the recorder. The tape spun fast
backwards until he shut it o. When he heard the vampire’s voice,
he leaned forward, listening very carefully, then hit the button
again for another place, and, hearing that, still another. But then
at last his face brightened, as the reels turned and the voice spoke
in an even modulated tone: “It was a very warm evening, and I
could tell as soon as I saw him on St. Charles that he had
someplace to go…”
And quickly the boy noted:
“Lestat…o St. Charles Avenue. Old house crumbling…shabby
neighborhood. Look for rusted railings.”
And then, stung the notebook quickly in his pocket, he
gathered the tapes into his briefcase, along with the small
recorder, and hurried down the long hallway and down the stairs
to the street, where in front of the corner bar his car was parked.
BY ANNE RICE
Interview with the Vampire
The Feast of All Saints
Cry to Heaven
The Vampire Lestat
The Queen of the Damned
The Mummy
The Witching Hour
The Tale of the Body Thief
Lasher
Taltos
Memnoch the Devil
Servant of the Bones
Violin
Pandora
The Vampire Armand
Vittorio, The Vampire
Merrick
Blood and Gold
Blackwood Farm
Blood Canticle
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
Christ the Lord: Road to Cana
Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession
Angel Time
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANNE RICE is the author of more than twenty-ve
bestselling books. She lives in New Orleans.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1976 by Anne O’Brien Rice
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-97120
eISBN: 978-0-307-57585-2
This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
v3.0
